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A NEW GOSPEL 



BY 

PERSONA 



* * / will not leave you comfort less y 
I will come to you. ' ' 

John 14, 18. 



(X,,t^^.^4^ 



NEW YORK 

PRIVATELY PRINTED 

1908 



LIBRARY of CONQRESS 
Two CopiM Received 
JAN 171908 
Copynent £atn» 



copy/bT 



Copyrighted 1907 

By 
A. FASSLER 






FOREWORD 

The Christ came to me one day that I was bowed down 
in sorrow over the sins and imperfections of our time. 

For in my youth I had dreamed of an ideal country, a 
Christian land, and lo, what I found all around me during 
twenty years of search, had so little of His Spirit that it 
seemed to me as a pagan land, where He was unknown. 

For, since my younger years, I tried to walk in His steps, 
as the shadow follows the substance, and, as I came nearer 
to Him, He came nearer to riie, until He had His abode 
within my heart and was as one with me. 

When He abided with me and we had become more as 
one soul, when He had imparted to me some of His Spirit, 
He revealed Himself more and more. I had sowed in me 
the seeds of His Spirit and I reaped in return a consciousness 
like His. 

In time I became so as one with Him that I could almost 
see things as He would have seen them, and judge them 
with His judgment. 

Then we set out together in the walks of men, saw things 
as they were, and, in the silence of my conscience I heard 
His Spirit pronounce its judgment on our age and their 
shortcomings. 

I submitted to Him the burning questions of our time, 
our doubts and perplexities and, out in the world or in the 
silence of soul communions. He told me His opinions on 
them. He told me also of Himself, His mission and of the 
mistakes men had made about Him. 

And, as His words were not for me alone, but interested 
all men, I could not keep them for myself, so I wrote them 



Foreword 

down for all the children of the Father. Whenever in 
these pages I mention Him going with me as a living person, 
it means that His Spirit accompanied me, and wherever we 
talked together, it is the dialogue of a man with his higher 
self, the ideal man created in him by the Spirit of Christ, 
seeing with His eyes, judging by Christ's standards. 

Herein then is contained what His Spirit revealed to me 
during the twenty years we lived together in this part of the 
world; herein are contained His judgments, with all the 
Imperfections of a man's soul, which was only an instrument 
of transmission, an imperfect mirror, trying to reflect the 
glory of the Light Eternal. 



V' 



PART I 

HIS SPIRIT ON RELIGIOUS SUBJECTS 



A NEW GOSPEL 



Before setting out on our journey through this civiliza- 
tion of ours, His Spirit propounded to me the following 
question: "Friend, what thinkest thou, if I should come 
again to earth, would men know me for what I am? " 

I answered, saying : " Thou knowest. Lord. Indeed, if 
Thou shouldst come in a cloud as some of Thy disciples 
expect Thee, all men would not fail to know Thee and hail 
Thee as their Lord." 

" Thou knowest little whereof thou speakest," said He. 
" What would be the necessity for me to come to-day in 
such a miraculous way as in a cloud, when my mere appear- 
ance in some civilized country would be heralded from one 
end of the earth to the other? Thinkest thou not that this 
would be equivalent, in this day of cables and telegraphy, to 
be seen by all men? 

"They would be informed by the daily press of what I 
do, and my least sayings would be cabled to the extremities 
of the world. But this present day is not one of such mira- 
cles, and if I should come in the same manner as the first 
time, as a son of man, how thinkest thou men would 
receive me ? " 

" With open arms, Lord, I am sure." 

" No, friend, men would know me no more than they did 
on my first coming. Some kind, simple, loving souls would 
recognize me, but by the great mass of the people, I would 
be considered as an impostor, even as insane." 

3 



A New Gospel 

" But, O Christ," protested I, " couldst thou not easily 
prove thy identity by wonders and miracles? " 

"If men do not know me by my character and the truths 
which I speak, they would not believe me even if I wrought 
miracles. They that are mine know me through their souls, 
not through their eyes or their intellect, and they that are 
not mine would not know me under whatever form I should 
appear. 

'' Believe me, friend, if I were to come again, I could 
not do it under a different form than of yore. I could not 
drop from the sky and would have to be born and reared as 
any one of you. I would be a man like thee, the only differ- 
ence, perhaps, between my former and my new self would 
be the times, the environment, the circumstances and the cul- 
ture; in spirit, I would be the same. But, who recognizes 
to-day the perfected spirit as a sign of divinity? 

" No, friend, thy brother men, expecting a miracle worker 
coming as in a cloud, and not knowing the truth which 
is in me, would not recognize me, and I could pass in their 
midst as unknown as the least of them, ii my spirit did not 
clash with the spirit of their time; and if it would clash, 
they would revile and persecute me, as did the men of 
my time." 

And as I sat there, knowing in my heart of hearts that 
what He said was true and that He could not even get 
admission to membership in our churches, for the creeds He 
would have to subscribe to would be incomprehensible to 
Him, He added more forcibly: 

" Friend, so many false notions have been spread about 
me that even they that are mine would not know me, for 
the Christ the scriptures have made, or the one men have 
made unto themselves is not like unto me. The true Christ 
should first be restored among men, then they shall know me 
when I come again, or when some one just like me shall 
appear. 

" If I came in my true light men would preach against 

4 



A New Gospel 

me in their stipended churches, and their press would revile 
and mock me, for have they not done the sam.e to all 
prophets ? 

" As I would have to pursue some kind of a profession 
like any one of you, in order to make a living — for men 
like me could not grow among the rich of this world — they 
would say sneeringly, as of yore : ' Behold, is this not Jesus, 
the carpenter of Nazareth?' or the mechanic, the artist, 
the professor, according to the trade I would have selected. 

As I would rise against the wrongs and evils of the time 
in ecclesiastical as well as in secular matters, they would 
proclaim me full of conceit for criticising established con- 
victions, just as the rabbis of my time rose in their wrath 
against me, accusing me of attacking their traditions. 

" So, friend, thou seest that public recognition would not 
be my lot. But, now, as of yore, those that are of me would 
rejoice in these new words of mine, and those that are not 
of me would call me a blasphemer, as did the chief priests 
of Jerusalem. 

" Let not this fact discourage thee, O my disciple, or pre- 
vent thee from recording what my spirit shall dictate to thee 
during the days of our going and coming together. Few 
have listened to me in my time, few may listen to thee, but 
truth is mighty and shall prevail." 

Thus spoke the Master. Then, encouraged by His voice, 
I felt more at liberty to open to Him my heart and lay 
before Him our problems, religious, philosophical and social. 



II 

As I longed first to know what His Spirit had to say 
about the doubts and perplexities of our time, I laid these 
before him: 

" O Master," said I, " this is an age of doubt; we are no 
more simple children of the faith who accept without ques- 

5 



A New Gospel 

tlons what our elders told us; we have reached the age of 
reason. We are longing for new words of life, for a new 
revelation. The God of our fathers, even Thy personal 
God, O Christ, has been weighed in the scale of our reason 
and He has been found w^anting. 

" The religions of old are dying around us. Thy children 
can no more believe in the things that are preached to them 
in Thy name, and, because they cannot accept them, they 
reject all religion." 

He answered me, saying: '' Friend, tell me of these doubts, 
and I will try to answer thee." 

Then I laid before Him the conflict of faith with reason, 
the modern struggle between the old and the new concep- 
tions of God and of religion. 

" O Teacher, there is to-day a deadly antagonism between 
the God of old and our reason, and either one must come out 
a victor of the conflict: if it is the old God, his victory will 
proclaim the failure of human reason ; if it is reason, the old 
God must perish. 

" There has been in the last fifty years a wonderful change 
in all our conception of the universe and our place therein, 
first in science, then in religion. Our ideas, O Master, 
about the biblical God, maker of heaven and earth, who 
took matter in His hands and fashioned in six days this 
world and its living inhabitants have changed, for we have 
studied nature and her ways of operating. 

" While we have studied nature, O Teacher, we have 
anxiously searched for the benevolent God that our fathers 
and Thyself have preached to us, and we have not found 
Him. 

'' We found to the contrary that, if this God is omnipo- 
tent He is not benevolent, for He has let, in nature and in 
history the worst crimes be committed, and has let mankind 
suffer the worse sufferings, besides being responsible for all 
the crimes and criminals of history, the Neros, the Attilas, 
the Borgias, the Torquemadas, responsible also for the thou- 

6 



A New Gospel . 

sands of human lives he led to destruction through natural 
upheavals, volcanic eruptions, earthquakes and other catas- 
trophes. 

*' When man, O Master, knew his exact place in this 
world, he saw that throughout the ages nature had been 
rather against him than for him, more of a shrew than a 
loving mother, he saw that the spirit which animated her 
had been indifferent rather than benevolent. All that man 
has gained, he has conquered by long centuries of effort and 
suffering; his experience was acquired in spite of all the 
natural forces in league against him. The sun would have 
burnt him had he not found shelter; the earth would have 
let him starve had he not procured food by preying on other 
creatures ; water would have drowned him had he not 
learned how to swim, and the indifferent cold of the winter 
nights would have frozen him had he not found fuel. Be- 
sides, ferocious beasts would have devoured him and his 
specie, had not his intelligence taught him how to manufac- 
ture weapons. 

" Arrived at the end of his inquiry, man, dumb with sur- 
prise, saw that all the universe had been in enmity against 
him, and he realized bitterly that his whole specie would 
have disappeared from the face of the earth, as did others 
which preceded his, without a tremor from one star in 
heaven, without a sympathetic feeling from anything on 
earth. 

" Where was then the God, the benevolent Father whom 
His ancestors had worshiped? Man looked for Him, but 
his search was in vain ; and then his conclusion was, O Mas- 
ter, that if there is an intelligent force in this universe it 
has no more feeling for him than the passing wind or gravi- 
tation and, therefore, what man is, he has become without 
the help of the God of his fathers. 

" When man, O Master, had finished his search for a 
personal God in nature, he turned toward history. In his- 
tory he found some of the most important events determined 

7 



A New Gospel 

by the most trivial circumstances. The hollow roadway of 
Waterloo changed the face of Europe; whole tribes of men 
have disappeared without leaving any trace. No intelligent 
directions can be discovered in the march of historic events, 
they all can be explained through relation of cause and effect. 
If we can discover any sensible amelioration in the social 
conditions of the people, it has been conquered by countless 
sufferings, and this often in spite of those who represent God 
on earth, priests and churches. 

" Then man turned the searchlight of his reason upon 
himself, O Master, and found that the same blind chance 
presides at his destiny. No intelligent choice directs the 
distribution of riches which are lavished upon unworthy men 
without any care for their moral worth. A monster may be 
born in a palace and a genius In a garret. Those that do 
good do not derive from it any material benefit, and those 
that do evil are not punished. In his life neither has man 
found a vestige of any superior intelligence or of a retribu- 
tive justice. At last man, O Lord, pursuing his inquiry, 
came face to face with the problem of human suffering. 

" He saw whole populations wiped out by unforeseen 
catastrophes, floods, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, he saw 
numberless accidents strike him In the course of his daily 
life; he saw children run over under their mother's eyes, 
couples separated by shipwrecks or railroad accidents, and 
whole cities with their populations destroyed by fire. And 
the thought that a friendly God directed all those things 
seemed to him such a great blasphemy that he had to renounce 
forever seeing the hand of God in human contingencies and 
the laws of his destiny. 

'' But when man, reaching the climax of his search, 
descended In the abyss of miser}^ and disease, when he saw 
concentrated In a children's hospital, the infinite sum of 
pain and suffering weighing through the laws of heredity, 
on Innocent heads, he recoiled in awe and anguish, and It 
seemed to him even greater blasphemy to attribute one Iota 

8 



A New Gospel 

of responsibility for such injustice to the Being he had 
learned to respect and to love. Then, wanting to find out 
even the source of his religion, man discovered at the end 
of his long inquiry that his ancestors found themselves so 
lonely in the universe, and reality so rude and cruel to them 
that, in order to find the courage to persevere in being, they 
had to create to themselves an ideal world wherein to take 
refuge in their dark hours against the hardships of reality. 
Thus, O Master, they found solace in the realm of music, 
poetry, art, philosophy and science, and thus they created 
religion. 

" Thus man stands to-day, O Christ, between the horns 
of this dilemma: either he must abandon forever the idea 
of a God, omnipotent, responsible for evil, or accept a God 
benevolent but limited in his power. And ever since, O 
Lord, some of us, unable to choose, have remained orphans, 
preferring no God at all to the one who seems to us either 
cruel or powerless. We turn now to Thee in expectation. 
Speak Thou now the word, O Master, that shall solve our 
perplexities and clear our doubts. 

"Abide with us in this hour; fast falls the even tide of 
doubt and then shall come the night of unbelief when we 
shall see Thee no more! Burst Thou open the doors of the 
theological grave wherein Thou sleepest since two thousand 
years! Throw away the shroud of time-worn creeds and 
appear to us again, as in Galilee, in Thy primal freshness 
and youth! Let Thy Spirit light anew our obscurity, for 
our way is dark and lonely, and our hearts are cast down 
within us! 

" The old paths are worn out, O Master, and our souls 
yearn after new ones and new lights. Speak Thou again, 
we beseech Thee, a new gospel in the language of our 
times ! " 



A New Gospel 



III 

Then spake to me the Spirit of the Master, in the silence 
of my conscience, while I listened to Him reverently. 

" The men of this generation demand a new light and a 
new sign: what shall I answer them? 

" If this were an age of faith rather than an age of 
reason, the words I have once spoken would suffice for their 
guidance, but, if they insist, I shall speak to them the lan- 
guage of their time. The fact, O man, that thine have 
believed through countless centuries, in the existence of a 
God in which they can no more believe, does not prove that 
their conceptions of him were, even once, right, for man's 
theological notions may have been as erroneous as his scien- 
tific ideas, and the true God is not responsible for man's 
misunderstandings. 

" Thou hast spoken of man's struggle against the forces 
of nature in league against him. Hast thou ever thought 
that probably, being given nature's mode of evolution, man 
could not have been made what he is in any other way? 

"Without necessity would there have been inventions? 
Without resistance would there have been creative energy? 
Without obstacles and difficulties to surmount would there 
have been the intelligence to surmount them? 

" Thou hast said that man had to find refuge against the 
cruelty of reality in the creation of an ideal world — ^which 
after all he may only have discovered, as he discovered 
mathematics — let me ask thee then, O friend, if this ideal 
world would ever have been created had reality been less 
severe, less cruel? Would there have been an ideal world 
at all had the rigors of necessity not forced man's moral 
nature to take refuge in it? 

" Why then blame the rough schoolmaster of nature for 
a process of education which has made humanity what it is, 

lO 



A New Gospel 

and without which it might still be in the oyster or jelly- 
fish stage! This process has been cruel and blind in its 
operation, even unjust, as it seems to the species and indi- 
viduals it destroyed in its course, but nature's ways are not 
man's ways, and the survivors might even find in this 
severe process of selection, some crude forms of love — a love 
which is not like man's love. 

" Yes, friend, from this rude process of evolution man 
was to reap his grandest benefit, for during this struggle 
against material necessities and the enmity of nature, God 
was in the making in man. The germ of the Spirit which 
was in him, spurned by necessity, grew and made him what 
he is, sharpened his intelligence and keened his wits. That 
he may have attributed to outside help what in reality was 
only the work of his intelligence does not lessen the impor- 
tance of his evolution. So, alongside of man's material 
growth, has taken place another, the evolution of the moral 
world. 

*' Put in presence of an antagonistic force, man had to 
oppose to it another, and this force he drew from inside. 
To the exterior pressure he offered a corresponding interior 
pressure, and ever since he has been a victor in the measure 
that his inside pressure resisted successfully the one from 
outside. 

" But primitive man never realized this ; he attributed 
his victory over the elements to the protective idols or gods 
he had manufactured himself, while in reality he owed every- 
thing to this force whose seat was in himself. It is all the 
more true, O friend, that in creating his gods, man has 
done nothing else but to project himself in them, for, as 
his intelligence and spirit grew, so his gods grew likewise. 
The clay or wood fetishes of his household became the titular 
gods of his tribe, and one of these tribes having established 
its supremacy, by force of arms, over the others, their tribal 
god became the god of the nation, as happened with the 
Yaweh of the Jews. Finally, O my disciple, thou knowest 

II 



A New Gospel 

how the Jehovah of Israel has become the god of all human- 
ity and has remained so for two thousand years. 

" But at no time in history has this god been recognized 
as final, for he never ceased growing in the hearts of men. 
Why, then, O friend, should He be forever set, established 
and sealed in a book? Has man's spirit stopped growing 
that the old God should stop growing also? 

" Thus, O friend, thou canst see how, out of primitive 
chaos man alone, of all animals, has evolved the idea of a 
God of righteousness, of holiness, of love. This God has 
been in formation since man was first capable of thinking: 
dost thou think He is now perfect among you? Why then 
lament and fear for the future of religion, when some of 
the old conceptions are destroyed and replaced by others, 
more conforming to truth and consequently better? 

" Why should not this generation revise its notions of 
God, as a thousand others have revised theirs? 

" Let us now admit as valid the claim of reason that one 
cannot find empirically any trace of a benevolent God, either 
in nature or in history, let us take for granted that the 
evidence of a personal transcendent God cannot be proven 
experimentally: there still remains the interior God, the 
God of conscience as a last refuge of the divinity. It is 
this interior God who has revealed himself in man and by 
man, whom you should worship now, if you find the exterior 
God of nature indifferent to your fate. For verily this 
God exists only in man and through man and, if there were 
no sentient creatures like him in this universe, God would 
not exist, for no sentient being would reflect Him. What 
would it be to Him to have an existence per se if none was 
there to share the consciousness of it? 

" Man is consequently the material of which God is 
made; it becomes his duty to increase the sum of God now 
existing in the universe, and the great among you are those 
that increase the sum of the Spirit. Men have believed in 
the exterior God, they have imprisoned Him in a book and 

12 



A New Gospel 

have persecuted each other in His name, but the interior 
God is infinite and no other limits are set to His greatness 
than the vastness of man's conceptions. The exterior God 
creates rituals and mercenary worshippers, the God of con- 
science creates only worshippers in Spirit and in truth. The 
exterior God cannot be found anywhere, the other is eter- 
nally present on the altar of conscience. 

" This God, O friend, does not exact a showy cult or a 
magnificent ritual, but demands only the love of all that is 
holy, righteous, pure and beautiful. 

" He does not distribute material favors to those who 
offer Him exterior sacrifice, but grants to His true wor- 
shippers inner rewards so sweet and so glorious, and to the 
soul a peace so ineffable that material satisfactions cannot 
compare with it. How then canst thou say that the just 
is not rewarded? Verily, the poor in his cottage, if he has 
this peace of soul, is more fortunate than the unjust rich in 
his palace! It is possible, O my disciple, that the exterior 
God your fathers imagined, being busy with the running 
of this material universe, forgets sometimes to punish the 
guilty, but the inner God is inexorable and does not let one 
transgression of his laws pass unpunished before the tribunal 
of conscience. 

" And it is better, O friend, to fall in the hands of human 
justice than before the court of such a judge. For he 
rewards constantly every good action and punishes instantly 
each iniquity. Why sayest thou then that good goes unre- 
warded and evil unpunished? There may be discord some- 
times in the moral world, but there is no anarchy. The 
material sun may shine alike upon the just and the unjust, 
but the inner sun does never shine upon the unjust. What 
better God therefore desirest thou, and what better justice 
demandest thou? 

*' But, O friend, a God that is only just is not an ideal 
God, for he lacks love. He does not satisfy man's inner 
yearning for the peace of his soul, through pardon and 

13 



A New Gospel 

reconciliation. The further evolution of the idea of God 
demanded a greater attribute, the one of love, and this love 
I have revealed you, so that your souls should be freed of the 
burden of your sins by the consciousness of forgiveness, 
through repentance." 



IV 

" But, Master," retorted L " art thou not afraid to pro- 
claim human conscience as our sole guide in the knowledge of 
truth?" Where was conscience in the beginning of man's 
moral growth, ^vhen he was roaming in the trees of the 
primaeval forests, and where was his God then? ^loreover, 
what authority can have, as a guide, the conscience of the 
uneducated and the depraved. 

" Friend," replied the Spirit, " when I speak of conscience 
I do not mean the individual conscience, which may be 
uneducated or depraved, as thou sayest, but the greater con- 
science, the sum total of man's experience in the field wherein 
the individual seeks guidance. 

" As to man's moral beginnings, his God was just as much 
in infancy then as any other branch of his mental equipment. 
This being so. who was then the leader, the authority' for 
a step forward in his education? Was it not the most en- 
lightened conscience, the most refined? And, what was the 
instrument whereby the more educated conscience was recog- 
nized as superior by those who accepted its leadership ? Was 
it not man's inner sense of what is right, his intuition of 
what is just and good? " 

" It certainly was, O blaster," said I. 

" Well, friend, as it was then, so it is to-day. A more 
enlightened conscience than yours, more sensitive to truth, 
more intuitive, will be your leader and authorit}', if you 
want it or not. 

" To refuse to obey its dictates is to commit the unpardon- 

14 



A New Gospel 

able sin, which is to know the highest truth, the highest 
good, and not to conform to them. 

" Thou hast also spoken, O friend," went on the Spirit, 
** of the irregularities of birth and of fortune : does the inner 
God distribute wealth which is to Him useless, for it cannot 
procure peace to the soul? Dost thou believe that He 
blesses your Wall Street speculations or sanctions your busi- 
ness tricks? 

" Or, is this God responsible for your social irregularities, 
created by you and abated by you? Is He responsible for 
your sins, your vices or your gathering in great foul cities, 
all which things are responsible for disease? Is He respon- 
sible for your ignorance of and violation of the laws of 
health and hygiene, which causes the diseases you transmit 
to your children? 

" Besides, who has taught you to make God the author 
of evil, for how can two opposite and antagonistic forces 
proceed from the same will? 

"If you make your God the author of evil you make Him 
responsible for all the wrongs of the past, the present and 
the future. You make Him the author of all diseases, acci- 
dents, vices, crimes, desolations, tears and tortures. By what 
right would you make of my Father a tortioner? 

" Why not escape from your self-made dilemma : God 
will and cannot, or God can and will not, by deciding 
frankly that God will, but cannot? 

" For is not a God benevolent but limited, preferable to a 
God omnipotent, but not benevolent? Of what necessity 
is to your conscience an omnipotent God? 

" Have you not found, all through the history of your 
moral evolution, the forces of good and evil in mortal strug- 
gle, and are they not struggling now? Does this not prove 
to you that God is limited and that the Spirit finds itself 
in the presence of evil, a condition which God has not cre- 
ated and which he fights through you? 

" Does this present imperfect moral condition of the world 

15 



A New Gospel 

not show clearly that the victory is not yet won, and that 
this victory is only gradual? Does it not show that the 
victory of God is only partly obtained and that, even God, 
is in the making within you ? 

" Verily, I say unto you, the God of the future has not yet 
been manifested, for He is still in formation. God is within 
you and it depends on you that His kingdom shall come on 
earth: bring therefore your individual stone to the making 
of the God which is the work of all ages. Perfect yourselves 
that your God be perfect." 



Then I asked Him: " Master, Thou hast well spoken, 
but Thou hast not answered me upon all points. Why hast 
Thou revealed to us God as the Father when He has nothing 
to do with our material welfare? " 

And he answered me, saying: 

" You cannot find the Fatherhood of God by studying 
nature, this is a contribution from man's conscience. Each 
of the prophets and teachers has contributed his mite to the 
making of the God the ages have evolved, each one has 
created his conception. In them each of the attributes of 
God has found its birth, and in me and by me the eternal 
Spirit reached the idea of its fatherhood to man. I did not 
find this idea in nature, but in myself, it is my contribution 
to the work of milleniums, the making of the God which 
is in being since the first sparkle of the Spirit moved on the 
face of the waters, since the first sentient being started his 
march to the Spirit. 

" The Fatherhood idea has taken birth with me, but it is 
left to you to bring about its realization by loving one 
another as should the children of a common father. As far 
as the idea of a God interfering in your material welfare 
is concerned, have ye not found out, through the operation 

i6 



A New Gospel 

of modern reason, that He has nothing to do with the events 
of your evolution and history, but that the Spirit has achieved 
all of it through its growth within you? 

" Why then look you for an external or direct interven- 
tion which your reason cannot discover, which has never 
taken place, and why worry at all about such an intervention 
when I have told you: ' Seek ye first the kingdom of God 
and its righteousness and all things shall be added unto 
you : 

Then I told Him: ''Teacher, dost Thou not contradict 
Thyself ? For Thou hast said : ' The very hairs of your 
head are numbered,' and ' do they not sell two sparrows for 
a farthing and verily I say unto you, not one of them falls 
on the ground without the permission of your Father which 
is in Heaven? ' " 

Then he retorted : 

" How long shall ye be slaves of texts and authoritative 
statements? Verily, if I used Oriental images to show you 
how much the Father, in my estimation, took care of His 
children, I spake with the ideas and the learning of my 
age. But now that you have grown, have you found such a 
Father with such a care in nature? If you can prove such 
a Father exists, believe ye on Him, but if you cannot, don't 
believe in Him because of words I may have once spoken. 
For, verily, I say unto you again, there is no infallible man, 
no infallible book, no infallible church. Do not place unrea- 
soning faith in old texts, but in the living truth only. 

" When men were children in mind, the Spirit spake to 
them as unto children, with authority; but to-day, some of 
you have outgrown childhood and can tell to the Spirit: let 
us reason together. 

" But, verily, the greater number of you are still children 
and this new wine is too strong for them. Let such keep 
the old texts and drink the old wine in the old vessels. For 
this new wine I give unto you to-day would burst any 
vessel not strong enough to contain it." 

17 



A New Gospel 



VI 

One day I happened to enter the store of a publisher of 
theological and religious works. Shelves upon shelves of 
books I beheld, great big volumes bound in all colors and 
looking learned, grave, venerable. The Spirit of the Master 
seemed greatly impressed within me at the sight of so much 
printing, and I felt proud of the place He occupied in our 
religious literature. "What are all these about?" queried 
the Spirit. " These, O Lord, are books written to enlighten 
men on Thy subject, commencing with the Bible at the 
garden of Eden and unfolding God's plan of salvation, until 
Thy coming." 

And selecting some books at random, I opened them: 
" Behold! here is a learned treatise on Thy Prenatal State; 
here is a wise discourse on Thy Immaculate Conception; 
this one is on Thy Incarnation; and this other a very erudite 
pamphlet on the Mystery of the Holy Trinity" Then, 
turning to another shelf: " Here, O Lord, is a book on the 
doctrine of Sacrifice and Atonement; another on the Chris- 
tian doctrine of Sin; a third one on Thy Atonement and 
Intercession; a fourth on Thy Vicarious Sacrifice j and so 
forth ad infinitum. 

" On this shelf, O Lord, lie ponderous volumes of dog- 
matics to expound church doctrines and dogmas, and count- 
less works of apologetics to defend them. Behold, there 
are no less than three recent ones, while hundreds have been 
written since the beginning of Thy era, in all countries and 
all languages. 

" Hundreds of learned men paled under the lamp to 
write these books, which are made over again every thirty 
years under a new form. The world could not contain all 
that has been written about Thee." 

" And all this, sayest thou, has been put forth to explain, 

i8 



A New Gospel 

and comment on, a personality as simple as mine? Men 
have indeed an amazing imagination," said the Spirit. 

" Yes, Master, nothing short of marvelous. Besides that, 
each one of those books is fortified with commentaries, copi- 
ous footnotes and reference galore, all showing to the bewild- 
ered laymen that Thy doctrine, O Master, is not as simple 
as Thou thinkest. Moreover, when the Spirit of the times 
assails one of these doctrines, there arise a bevy of new 
defenders of the faith, who, with the ardor of a Scotch 
divine, try to sit on the lid and inflict on a long suffering 
Christianity new inquartos and voluble commentaries, giv- 
ing a modern twist to the venerable dogma." 

" But how did men come to pervert my simple teaching 
into such a complicated system of theology?" asked the 
Spirit. 

*' Here is Harnack's History of the Dogma. This Ger- 
man historian will show Thee by what process this has been 
accomplished. Thou wilt see herein that every age has 
contributed to the beclouding of thine original words, which 
process is called the natural evolution of the dogma." 

" But tell me, friend," said He, " what are all these 
strange lucubrations founded upon? Have they a basis of 
fact or reason? " 

" Not necessarily, O Lord. They are grounded on some 
alleged words of thine, remembered wrongly or rightly by 
Thy disciples, years after Thy death. The said disciples, in 
their turn, have left some writings, and it is on these pre- 
mises, on the free conclusion that these writings are divinely 
inspired, that the whole theological fabric rests. This is 
called scriptural evidence, but would not hold in modern 
rules of evidence." 

And as I remained a moment silent in deep meditation 
over the strange fabrications of men, His Spirit spake again. 

" Friend," said He, " Has there been no protest against 
these dogmas and creeds? Has never a voice been raised 
against this unnatural complication of my teaching? " 

19 



A New Gospel 

"Most certainly, dear Master! Through all centuries 
men have arisen who have protested against the official 
orthodoxy of their time, but the Church had then an easy 
way of squaring things : she simply condemned the dissenters 
as heretics and burned them at the stake in Thy name." 
And His Spirit protested in horror at the remembrance of 
all the sins committed in His name. " Are men still doing 
such things nowadays? " queried He. 

" No, Master! Thanks to progress, not to Thy Church, 
we have a little more freedom of conscience. The eccle- 
siastical authorities can no more burn heretics, they can only 
expel them from the ministry when they are intelligent 
clerics, or refuse to accept them in the churches when they 
are intelligent laymen, who cannot put on the heavy armor 
of the creeds. Still, to be candid, there is a certain uneasiness 
in church circles, the armor plate shows signs of getting 
loosened in some places, and efforts are being made to revise 
the creeds. Even Presbyterianism is sometimes trying to shed 
its shell; the process is a painful one and never succeeded, 
for the Presbyterian crab is a crusty old one and its shell 
has many dogmatic pieces. 

" Thy Spirit, O Lord, is in other religious bodies, held 
down so firmly by the armor plate of creeds that human 
conscience chokes and dares not breathe under it. One of 
those bodies, the largest, is so tightly corseted with the steel 
of dogmas that the little of Thy Spirit left under the armor 
will never come to liberty again. 

"Why! no later than 1870, O Christ, that church has 
screwed dow^n the last plate by proclaiming its leader infalli- 
ble!" "What!" exclaimed the Spirit in surprise. "How 
did they come to do that?" "Well, In this way: a few 
fallible men get together, elect one of their number and 
presto ! the selected one becomes infallible." 

" But," protested the Lord, " how can several naughts 
added together make a unity? " 

" I don't know, O Master, neither do the good cardinals, 

20 



A New Gospel 

but Thou oughtest to know, for Thou art supposed to per- 
form the miracle." 

After we left the publisher's store, the Spirit remained a 
while silent, deeply meditating upon the significance of all 
this sacred literature. 

" Tell me, O disciple," said he at last — as we resumed our 
journey like Dante and Virgil — '' is there any hope that 
some day and somewhere, somebody will rise and proclaim 
my gospel in its purity, without adulterations and increments 
of the ages, and without theology? 

** So many men have proclaimed my divinity, will some 
one at last proclaim my humanity ? " 

" Thou knowest, O Lord," answered I, " Thy true Spirit 
certainly liveth among some men and has always so lived, 
in its pristine simplicity. Those, the humble, the true and 
the pure in heart will restore Thee to Thy place. They that 
long for sincerity, truth, holiness and love, as Thou hast 
longed, shall re-establish Thee among men as they see Thee 
in their hearts. 

" But, O Master, be not hard on the theologians, for they 
do not mean ill. Their minds are so befuddled with apos- 
tolic and patristic conceptions of Thee, that they simply 
cannot see Thee as Thou art, no more than thine own 
disciples saw Thee in Thy true light, and, if even those 
who were with Thee did not understand Thee, how can our 
poor scholars of to-day, who are led astray by all the weird 
constructions the ages have built upon Thy simply person- 
ality. Thy life and Thy mission? 

" But, O dear Master, this age Is fast coming back to a 
natural, more rational and less Imaginative view of things. 
Thy restoration Is commenced In the minds and hearts of 
men, and soon Thy true disciples shall reverence Thy true 
image In spirit and In truth." 



21 



A New Gospel 



VII 

One bright Easter day the Spirit and I went around the 
town and we saw people all dressed to go to church. 

We followed them inside one of the greatest. The altar 
was all bedecked with roses, azaleas, palms and lilies. The 
spirit of Easter, a spirit of joy and renewal, was in the air, 
mingled with the first touches of spring. 

We sat down in a pew and heard anew, with some beauti- 
ful singing, the old, old storj^ of the first Eastern morn, 
when the disciples came to the Lord's Sepulchre and found it 
empty. 

" Lord," said I w^hen w^e went out again after the service, 
" Thou hast witnessed how faithfully Thy churches have 
kept the remembrance of Thy resurrection, and how rever- 
ently they celebrate its anniversary. 

" But, O Master, a doubt has always existed amongst 
men concerning Thy resurrection: Some deny it flatly and 
brand as a tissue of falsities, the Gospel's narrative of it, 
others treat the story of Thy apparitions as hallucinations 
of Thy disciples, others yet, theosophically inclined, say that 
what Thy friends saw on that day v/as not Thy body of 
flesh, but Thy astral or spiritual body. O Master, enlighten 
us and remove our doubt, I beseech Thee, for we are weary 
of suspense and the scoffers ask us constantly : ' Where's 
Thy God's resurrection?'" 

The Master answered me, saying: 

" Why do men attribute so much importance to my resur- 
rection? " 

'' We consider it important, O Lord, because Paul, Thy 
apostle, has said : * If Christ is not risen, therefore your 
faith is vain.' We take it also as a guaranty of our ow^n 
survival." And He answered me: 

" Men believe in my resurrection, but in what way would 
mine guarantee theirs? 

22 



A New Gospel 

" If I arose from the dead it was because death hath no 
power over Him that is all spirit, for spirit is of its essence 
immortal. Verily, if you live like me you shall likewise 
rise, but if you do not become like me, you shall not live 
the life of the Spirit, as the spirit only can enter eternal life. 
If you do not become spiritualized you cannot enter it." 

" O Lord," said I, '' Thou hast not answered me con- 
cerning Thy own resurrection." 

" Friend, what is the important point in my arising from 
the dead? Is it the everlasting life of the few molecules 
of my earthly body, or is it the survival of m.y spirit? " 

" Lord," said I, '' it is the everlasting life of Thy spirit." 

*' Behold, then, O my disciple, is not my spirit living 
to-day among you, and is it not covering the world? Of 
what use would be the resurrection of this body of mine 
that once incarnated it? Am I not greater since I have 
arisen, having now no limit of time or space, than when I 
v/as in the flesh? Verily, if you live like me, you shall be 
with me and wherever I am there shall you be also. What 
other fate than his Master's could the disciple envy? Be 
you then at rest in your mind, for, if the Master has had no 
resurrection why should the disciple demand one? And 
if He arose from the dead then shall His true disciples 
arise also, provided they live like Him and become one with 
Him." 

And I told Him: '' O Master, let it be done to me accord- 
ing to Thy will. For I shall be contented to be wherever 
Thou art, in life eternal or in death, provided I am with 
Thee. But I know that Thou liveth, for Thou art living 
in me to-day." 

Then the Master added : 

"Let yourselves not be worried saying: There being no 
spirit without some physical vehicle to carry it, with which 
vehicle shall our spirit enter eternal life ? Verily I say unto 
you: Nature's resources are infinite and she has already 
provided for such an emergency. If your survival be neces- 

23 



A New Gospel 

sary to the preservation of moral energ}-, it will take place; 
as to what concerns the survival of your loves, selfish ambi- 
tions and small wishes, how many of them deserv^e to be 
preserved, and how many men deserve eternal life? But 
the contents of your personalities shall pass through the 
Crucible of Death, whose fire will destroy all that is not the 
finest gold of the Spirit. 

" Of one great fact only need you rest assured, it is that 
you will reap whatever you sow. If you sow of the flesh, 
you will reap of the flesh corruption, but if you sow of the 
spirit you will reap of the spirit life eternal. Verily, this is 
one of the greatest truths that ever was spoken. 

" Now, I will say one more word to the doubters and 
speak to them the language of their time : If there is a future 
life or if there is none, you must live this life. There is one 
chance out of two that the immortality of the soul is a true 
fact: "WTiy not take this one chance and live as if there 
was another existence, if by so doing you lead a better and 
nobler life? 

" Immortality may be only in the making among you, as 
was flight, hearing and eyesight at one stage of animal 
evolution. The faith in its possibility would then become 
a necessity, so that your descendants may one day get the 
benefit of its realization. For the human eye would never 
have been evolved and perfected if your far away ancestors 
had said : ' There is no such thing as eyesight, let us stop 
striving to attain it.' 

" Faith in the possibilit}" of these things has created them, 
why should not the faith in man's eternal life, and his striv- 
ing after it, bring about its realization? Verily, for some 
of the past and some among you, it has been realized. 

" This generation needs a firmer belief in the potentiality 
and creative power of faith. But even were it true, as some 
of you believe, that personality^ is lost at death, learn then 
ho"vv to resign yourselves. You have renounced self, to 
follow^ me — ^who am only a part of the spirit — and thereby 

24 



A New Gospel 

you have found peace for your souls, why should you fear 
the greater renouncing of death, which shall merge your 
small self in the all-embracing one of the Father? Then 
shall ye all indeed be one with Him as I am one" 

Thus spoke the Spirit of the Master on that bright Easter 
morn. 

VIII 

His Spirit came to me one day that Death had entered 
my home and I was mourning the loss of my only child. 
It was night and I was keeping the wake alone. Her little 
white form lay among the white flowers, smiling in the 
serene majesty of death, and I, the joy of my life gone 
forever, was bowed down and broken-hearted by grief. I 
wept as I never wept before, during those dreadful hours 
of the night. 

But as I was thus sobbing over my lost child soul, He came 
to me in the silence of the death chamber. His presence 
was like that of a shadow; I did not see Him, but I knew 
He was there. 

Silently, I pointed to Him the calm figure among the 
white lilies and He looked — I knew He looked — and I knew 
also He was weeping with me. 

And when I felt His great sympathy flowing over me, I 
sobbed louder and could only murmur in my despair: 

"Why? O Master, why?" 

Then His voice came to me softly, a balm to my aching 
heart : 

" Brother, thou askest me why? Believest thou I or my 
Father is the cause of thy grief? How is this possible? My 
Father is Life, I am Life, and Death is our common enemy : 
why should we work for Death? 

" Thy beloved child was born with a right to live, but, as 
soon as she was born, the forces of Death battled against 
her and they have won. 

25 



A New Gospel 

*' O brother, who mourns more than we the triumphs 
of Death?" 

" What are we, then, O Master, even Thou and I," said 
I bitterly, " that Death can conquer us? We are like a 
flower that is in the morning and at night is cut down. Our 
days are numbered, yea, before our birth, our days are 
numbered." 

** Yea, brother, thou hast spoken right, the days of man 
are numbered before his birth, not by the Father, but by 
man's power of resistance against the forces of Death, disease 
and sin. Those that have great powers of resistance live 
long, those that have not, die young. Why then accuse 
the Father when one of those little ones falls under the touch 
of Death with which the Father himself is struggling con- 
stantly in the whole universe? Verily, I say unto thee, no 
mortal is ever recalled by Him except he die of old age, 
which is the natural death. For sin and disease who reap 
the harvest of human lives are death's instruments." 

And as I stood there, refusing to be comforted and 
lost in my despair. He spoke again, more gently, more 
sweetly : 

" Brother, dost thou not feel in thy heart the Father's 
heart mourning with thee, grieving with thee, weeping with 
thee because of the injustice life has done to thy child? Is 
not His Spirit constantly in sympathy with all them that 
mourn in His worlds, all them that fought His fight against 
Death and have been vanquished? 

" Verily, I tell thee. He gathers all those little ones, 
departed before their time, more preciously unto His bosom 
than a mother gathers her children for the night's sleep ; 
and the garden of the Spirit is full of just such tender 
flowers." 

But I, still refusing to be comforted, cried out unto Him, 
in anguish: 

" O Master, my child is dead for me, is she living in 
Thee, and shall I see her again ? " 

26 



* A New Gospel 

Then He, in His great patience and gentleness, rebuked 
me not: 

" Brother," said He, '' dost remember how I recalled to 
life Jairus' daughter, and gave her back to her parents ? " 

I could only sob and murmur, '* Yes, Master, I remember." 

" How could I have recalled her if she had not been 
living? For was she in that dead body of hers? If I could 
then recall to its earthly envelope the spirit of Jairus' 
daughter, how much more can I gather unto my spirit the 
spirit of this little one, thy daughter! " 

" Master," answered I, " I know that her spirit is now 
with the Universal Spirit, but, pray, clear another doubt: 
To-morrow a man who sits in Thy pulpit, will come here 
and tell me in Thy name that this child has been taken away 
by the Father's will, and that I should bow down resignedly 
before it. Tell, me, O Lord, that this is not true, for if 
it were so, I could never again lift up my hands to Him in 
prayer." 

" Brother," whispered the Spirit, '' is my God a mur- 
derer of little children or a tortioner of parents? If he had 
allowed them to come in this world, full of the rich promises 
of life and smiling sweetly to it, would it not almost prove 
human inconsistency to recall them suddenly? 

" But, verily, I say unto thee: Men, and not my Father, 
bring their children in this world, and ignorance, disease 
and death take them out of it, not He. Thousands of chil- 
dren die yearly through ignorance, filth, misery and disease, 
is it then my Father that killed them? Verily, my God is 
no murderer of children or of men. 

" Remove, therefore, my God as a cause of your goings 
and comings, for He has nothing to do with them, but 
accuse instead natural causes, which are sufficient to explain 
them all." 

Thus I listened to Him in the deep silence of the death 
chamber, during the dreary hours of the wake, while the 
great town around me was asleep. 

27 



A \eK- Gospel 

Thui He answered my perplexities and cleared mv aoubts, 
thus He consoled me. 

And because of His words. I did not accuse the Great 
God of having robbed me of my child, for. through the 
Spirit of Christ, He had grieved, mourned and wept with me. 



IX 

OxE Sunday, during the time I went with the ^^laster's 
Spirit to study the churches, we heard an old-fashioned ser- 
mon on the value, inerrancy and importance of the Scrip- 
tures. 

Then the Spirit of the Master entered into me and spoke 
against the bibliolatry. which perverted the minds of reli- 
gious people. 

" The Romanists, said He, '" have made unto themselves 
a pope of flesh, and they have proclaimed him infallible, but 
you have made unto yourselves a pope of paper and you 
worship him as inerrant. "WTiat is this fetish of a book that 
you have set on your altars? 

" Is this age so devoid of originality" that it cannot build 
its own conceptions without clinging servilely to the an- 
cients ? 

■■ H^^v :2n your ideas grow with the time if you accept 
as se: a:::, iennite the ideas of bygone men? 

" Is it rtz.-, ;^r you think them more inspired than those 
of to-day? 

'' Has then God revealed Hiirself more in the past than 
now? Verily, I tell you. He has revealed Himself more in 
the last hundred years than in all the previous centuries. 

" And how" did He re\'eal Himself to those whose revela- 
tions you accept? Where was Moses' Bible or the Pro- 
phets', and how did they receive their revelations? Think 
you perhaps that the Lord stood by them and dictated while 
they wrote? 

28 



A New Gospel 

" No, but His revelations came by the inflowing of His 
Spirit into man's soul. What He has done for the men of 
the past He is ready to do for you. Go you then forward 
seeking the truth in your own way, forming thereby a per- 
sonal conception of God, which shall be yours, and not 
Moses', Isaiah's, or Paul's. 

" Do not think yourselves compelled to accept forever 
servilely other men's ideas, but listen to the still, small voice 
of the Spirit and follow its dictates. But compare them to 
the dictates others have received, and do not believe your 
own voice to be inerrant, for there is no infallible criterion. 

*' Why should you abdicate your sacred right of free 
examination before a set of books, however much of the 
Spirit they may contain? 

''Is it because they are called the word of God? 

" Verily, I say unto you, every word of truth is the word 
of God. Is truth contained only in one book, and had the 
old Hebrews an everlasting monoply of it ? 

" And who commanded you to have such a faith in the 
Bible? What authority, other than superstitious reverence, 
have you to v/arrant your faith? 

" Where does this book itself claim the authority and iner- 
rancy wherewith you have clothed it? 

" Is it not a product of the human mind like any other 
Scripture, and consequently fallible? 

" Or do you, as the Chinese do with their Scriptures, 
reverence them because they are old? 

" Even in this you would err, for the Spirit has been 
revealed to man before the first book of the Bible was con- 
ceived in the mind of its first scribe, and it has continued its 
revelation since you have closed its canon. 

" The Spirit has spoken to man since there dawned in him 
the first consciousness that he had a spirit, since the days 
when its teachings were recorded in the books of the Hin- 
doos, the Chinese, the Persians and the Egyptians, since 
the days of Buddha and Confucius, of Socrates and Plato, 

29 



A New Gospel 

since the days of Manu, Epictetes and Marcus Aurelius, 
up to Thomas a Kempis, Spinoza, Pascal and Kant. But 
you have not recognized it as such. 

" Why have you used, and why are you using, only one 
small part of the rich inheritance of the ages, and why have 
you made of Hebraic literature alone the word of God? 
Could this word be found nowhere else? 

" Or think you these books alone are inspired ? 

" Believe me, there is only one inspiration, the inspiration 
of truth. All that is true and useful in the Bible comes 
from the Spirit. Verily, neither ]\Ioses nor Isaiah have been 
inspired differently than the author of the Imitation. Widen 
ye then the scope of your mind and make yourselves, out of 
all the wisdom of the ages and the revelations of the Spirit 
among all peoples, a book that shall be really the Bible of 
humanity. 

" Do not misunderstand me, O my disciple, I do not try 
to impeach thy respect for the Bible which contains a record 
of the evolution of the idea of God in a religiously gifted 
people, but I warn thee against the exaggerated importance 
and authority with which it has been vested. For, as men 
have made it, the Bible to-day stands in the path of a 
further evolution of my Spirit. While it is only a halting 
place, it is considered by many to be a terminal, and a final 
revelation. 

" But man has outgrown it in m_any respects, for the 
Spirit of man is infinite in its scope, and greater than any 
Bible that pretends to limit it. Verily, the Bible was made 
for man, not man for the Bible." 



X 

Sometimes^ when I was in communion with His Spirit, 
I asked Him all I longed to know about Himself since the 
days of my youth. 

30 



A New Gospel 

He told me about Himself one evening I was thinking 
of His wonderful life. 

" Master," did I ask Him, " wilt Thou let me understand 
the story of Thy life and of Thy mission, as Thou didst 
conceive It, for lo, men have enriched It and altered It with 
myths, legends and wonderful stories, giving strange Inter- 
pretations to Thy mission and even to Thy death. 

" Wilt Thou now give me the power to separate what is 
true from what Is false, what is really from Thee from what 
comes from men ? " 

And the Spirit said: "Friend, tell me what men have 
written about me?" 

And I laid before Him all the strange stories of the 
Gospels. 

" Lord," said I, " Thou wert long dead before men con- 
ceived the idea of writing down all they knew about Thee, 
and traditions, myths and legends had already been Inter- 
woven with the true record of Thy acts and sayings. 

** People had in those days vague notions about historical 
precision and accuracy; they were used to clothe their great 
men with marvelous and supernatural powers, and were 
prompt to weave legends around them. Those that carried 
Thy Gospel to the surrounding countries had to deal with 
people whom the supernatural and marvelous alone could 
strike, who were used to regard as sons of God all men a 
little out of the ordinary, so, when Thy disciples presented 
Thee to take the place of pagan gods, they could not make 
of Thee less than the gods they wanted Thee to supersede 
and they made of Thee the only true begotten Son of God. 
As all those pagan gods had performed wonderful miracles 
and done great things, the events of Thy life were uncon- 
sciously magnified and altered to suit the spirit of the age, 
for the limits of the true and the untrue were also very 
vaguely known. Some of the most marvelous events recorded 
in the Apocrypha have been discarded by the most enlight- 
ened, but enough was left to strike the pagan imagination 

31 



A New Gospel 

and to make of Thee, in the domain of the miraculous, no 
less a personage than any pagan god. 

" As to Thy doctrine and teaching, O Lord, Thy dis- 
ciples were soon brought in contact, in the centers of Greek 
learning, with Greek philosophy, and much of the latter's 
conceptions were embodied with the Hebraic, Apostolic and 
Pauline teachings. The Greek fathers completed this weld- 
ing together of the two thoughts, and it remained for medi- 
eval scholastics to complicate still more this strange mixture. 
Finally, our modern times have given the finishing touch to 
the strangest theological monument the ages have ever reared, 
a monument of which science was able only a few years 
ago to discern the artificial foundations. The result of this 
theology and philosophy has been to make of Thee a per- 
sonality, so complicated, so unreal, and so strange, that the 
people of the present time, trained in experimental thinking, 
and having a better knowledge of what is naturally possible 
or impossible, refuse to accept it as true. 

" And the worst is, O Lord, that, as the preservers of 
the Christian faith have refused to separate the dross from 
the pure gold and the impossible and false from what is 
true, the new generations are driven away from Thee, the 
authority of Thy life and teaching is thereby impaired and 
nullified, and Thy Gospel has no more saving power for the 
men of this generation. 

" What shall v/e do, O Master, and what shall we believe? 
Modern exegesis has sifted dov/n the material left by the 
Gospel writers, and so little is left that is not disputed by 
critics, that it is impossible for the average man to distin- 
guish what is really Thine from the traditions, the imagin- 
ings of the original writers and the subsequent interpo- 
lations? " 

J|t>. ^ ^ jfe Jl& a|£ Afe 

" Friend," said the Spirit, as I pondered over this grave 
problem, '* let us take the Gospels and read them carefully 

32 



A New Gospel 

In the light of thy time. Let us discard what modern reason 
refuses to accept, and we will see what manner of Christ 
will come out of this study." 

" Master," said I, " we will have to leave ofi Thy virgin 
birth. Thy miracles, all the supernatural of the Gospels, all 
the doctrines which have been built upon alleged words of 
Thine, for this generation refuses to accept them." 

"What are my miracles to my personality?" answered 
He. 

" Men can blot them all out, and still I shall remain, 
morally the same Christ, for they are not necessary to the 
conception of my spiritual nature. 

" Discard all the legendary side of my life, which is now 
Impossible of belief, drop the material side, all my alleged 
miracles, to retain only my spiritual nature, my teaching 
and my moral work, and thou shalt still have left as a 
residue a personality no son of man has ever equaled." 

I did then as His Spirit recommended, and this Is the 
Christ I found In the Gospels, viewed in the light of modern 
reason. 

^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ 

Born a Jew, the son of a carpenter, Jesus was brought 
up in the culture of the Jews of His time, and we find In 
His teachings traces of the influences of the Hebraic scrip- 
tures, even of ebionltic teaching, his mental and spiritual 
parentage. 

He fed on this literature, and these scriptures Inspired Him 
until the Spirit led Him Into greater truths, through natural 
evolution. His mother was a woman not different from any 
other in Nazareth and, after the Oriental status of her sex 
In His time, Jesus did not seem to consider her any more 
than any son of Israel considered his own mother. We find 
proof of this In different parts of the Gospels, notably where 
He said: "Who is my mother? and who are my brothers? 
Whosoever shall do the will of my Father which is in 
heaven, the same is my brother, and sister, and mother." 

33 



A New Gospel 

He lived among the simple folks of Galilee, by the hills 
of Nazareth, and worked with His father at a carpenter's 
bench. 

There the Spirit of God entered into Him because His 
heart was pure and trusting, and because He loved the truth 
and the life of the Spirit. 

He lived and observed men, and as He observed them. He 
saw^ that they did not live according to the dictates of His 
Spirit, which He felt to be one with the eternal spirit of 
truth. 

For His communion with the ideal had made Him differ- 
ent from other men, but still He went with them, for He 
loved them. 

He saw them in His time, as they do to-day, worship life- 
less texts, bygone ordinances, and feed on the dry husks of 
the law. 

He took great pity on them, for they knew not the Truth 
as it had revealed itself to His conscience. 

When He could keep no longer in check the message of 
God that was throbbing within Him, He came out in the 
world and rose against the false teaching of His time, its 
formalism and respect for the dead letter of the law, and 
those that embodied these things and kept them, hated Him, 
for His heart was burning with the living fire of the Spirit, 
and the truth which He felt within commanded Him 
imperatively to go forth and restore things as they should be. 

While He was among men He went from place to place 
doing good, healing those that had faith in Him, preaching 
the forgiveness of sin, and the higher life of the soul. He 
loved dearly the common people, was a friend to the publican, 
and did not cast away the sinner that came to Him. 

Humble men were His disciples, humble women loved 
Him, but the great of the land knew Him not. 

The Master soon realized that the clash of the new spirit 
He carried, with the spirit of His time, would cause men 
to destroy Him, but He gladly laid down His life that His 

34 



A New Gospel 

Spirit should live among men, to elevate them morally and 
make them happy as it had made Him happy. 

Then came the hour of darkness, the hour of those that 
could not bear the truth and lived from the preaching of 
old texts. We knov^ how they conspired against Him, 
bought Him from Judas and seized Him, how^ they impris- 
oned, reviled and, finally, crucified Him. 

# « ^ « « « « 

Thus, by this simple process of reconstructing His life 
along the same lines as any human life, and by discarding 
all miraculous and mythical stories of the Gospel narratives, 
we had reconstituted His life as it truly must have been. 
And Jesus did not come out belittled by this process. The 
great moral life and spiritual personality, disclosed in the 
Gospels, would have been simple enough for a wonderful 
and supernatural being, as the disciples conceived Him to be, 
but it was truly remarkable, lived by a son of man like us. 
And if it was small merit for a Son of God to live a perfect 
life, there was a greater power of inspiration for men to 
know that a man like us had once lived such a life. 

Were it even demonstrated that no such a being as Jesus 
ever existed, it were a priceless boon for humanity that His 
existence had once been postulated. For men, having faith 
in the possibility of becoming as perfect a man as Christ 
was, has lived to imitate His ideal, and the little progress 
he has made in moral perfection is due to his belief that 
once had lived a Perfect Man, and that every man could 
become like Him. 

This belief in the possibility of becoming an Ideal Man 
once destroyed, the moral stature of humanity will decrease, 
and man will never again have the strength to rise out of his 
congenital imperfection. 



35 



A New Gospel 

XI 

" Lord," objected I, to the Spirit after I had reached these 
conclusions, " those who have been fed on the old theology 
will find Thy life very simple and deprived of any cosmic 
grandeur. They had built upon some of Thy alleged words 
a great plan of salvation whereby Thou hadst died as a 
vicarious sacrifice for us sinners, in order to placate an angrj^ 
God whom we had offended by our sins. Thy blood was 
to render us innocents in the eyes of the divinity by some 
magical power, and Thy merits were to be attributed to us, 
so that the angry God men had imagined, did not see us 
as we were, but covered by Thy merits and saved by the 
punishment Thou hadst suffered in our place." 

" The minds of my disciples," answered the Spirit, " were 
too much filled with Hebraic sacrificial ideas, wherein the 
innocent bears away the sins of the guilty, to quote exactly 
my words or to comprehend their meaning. Why should 
you accept as true this sacrificial conception, which is against 
the educated reason of to-day and is recognized as false, 
immoral, unreasonable and inefficient, and against which 
every humane conscience protests vehemently? 

" But you are worthy children of your fathers who con- 
demned Galileo because he declared the earth to be round, 
when the Bible said it was flat, for you do not judge by 
evidence, but by traditions." 

" But, Lord," protested I, " do we not show by this 
fidelity to Thy spoken word how much we reverence Thee? " 

" This respect for my alleged words would be highly com- 
mendable," answered the Spirit, " if it were proven that I 
did really speak the words attributed to me. But as long 
as this is not established none has any right to build binding 
dogmas on such a frail foundation as words of doubtful 
origin. 

" You have with you men of learning, of erudition, who 
have studied the Gospels and have determined what comes 

36 



A Nezu Gospel 

from Christ and what comes from His disciples; listen to 
them, and form your judgment. 

" But remember, O friend, that I am not contained wholly 
In these Scriptures, my eternally developing spirit Is greater 
than they. I am greater than the Gospels. 

" Believe me, friend, my true Gospel Is still a saving 
power for this generation, but what part of It? Is It my 
miraculous birth, my sonship with God, my life, my death, 
all the strange imaginings of men ? What is, O my disciple, 
according to thee, the saving part of my Gospel? " 

" O Lord," answered I, " it Is the power of Thy example, 
for Thou hast helped man to realize, by Thy own life, that 
he could become as perfect as Thou wert morally perfect." 

And the Spirit said: "Verily, thou hast spoken truly. 
For I did not come to placate an angry God by offering 
myself as a sacrifice for the guilty; neither did I come as 
a substitute for the sinner, for, by vv^hat miracle can the 
sufferings of an Innocent, a stranger, clear away the sinner's 
guilt, which Is a matter personal to him. The redeeming 
power of an innocent's sufferings can only become efficient 
by touching the guilty 's heart, but In this sorrowing for the 
sins of the world I was not alone, for every true prophet, 
every Idealist, every righteous man suffers for the sins of 
others and bears their iniquities in the same manner in which 
I have suffered for your iniquities and have borne the burden 
of your sins; and even some men have laid down their 
lives, as I did mine, for the redeeming of their fellow-men. 

" Is it not the will of God that the Innocent suffer for 
the guilty; If this is unfortunately a reality It Is not due to 
the divinity, but It Is m.erely a consequence of human soli- 
darity, and is due to the fact that ye are members of one 

body, which is affected by the sins of each one of you." 
******* 

Then I said to Him: "O Lord, men love to see their 
beliefs condensed in form.ulas and creeds that they can easily 
grasp, wilt Thou not give us a new creed ? " 

37 



A New Gospel 

But He answered, saying: "What are creeds? They are 
of no necessity' to him who possesses the living truth. But, 
if thou desirest a short summary of what I have taught thee 
so far, wTite as follows: 

" I believe in the Universal Spirit that fills heaven and 
earth, and in Jesus Christ our brother, one of His Children, 
who was conceived, like all of us, carnally of man, spirit- 
ually of the Spirit, and was born of a woman. He incar- 
nated the Spirit, through natural process, as fully as is possi- 
ble to man, thereby making Himself our everlasting Model. 
He suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified and died. 
Martyr of the 'Gospel He revealed to men, He was buried, 
His Spirit rose from the dead and now is living forever 
among us. I believe in the brotherhood of men, in the 
communion of the true children of the Spirit, in the coming 
of the Kingdom of Christ on earth, in the resurrection of 
our spirit and in its life everlasting. Amen." 



XII 

One Sunday when we went out of some church in which 
the minister had delivered long prayers, the Master's Spirit 
spoke to me, saying: 

" Friend, the men of to-day have a strange conception of 
prayer. Their ancestors offered sacrifices to their gods to 
placate or conciliate them, but the men of the present have 
a less disinterested view, they only ask favors of their god. 
They make of Him a general distributor of all the things 
they wish, some huge Prayer-in-the-Slot Machine, out of 
which they expect ever}-thing just for the asking." 

" But, Lord," protested I, " art Thou not responsible for 
this conception ? Hast Thou not told us : ' Whatever ye 
shall ask the Father in my name ye shall receive '? " 

Then His Spirit grew indignant and rebuked me, saying: 

' What does in my name mean, and what does my name 

38 



A New Gospel 

stand for? Is it for your petty needs and small ambitions? 
Is it for your material or your spiritual needs?" 

" Lord," said I, " I think ' in my name ' stands for our 
spiritual needs." 

" Thou hast spoken truly," said the Master, " whatever 
help ye shall ask the Spirit for your spiritual needs, that ye 
shall receive. Ail other things are only accessory and depend 
on purely human agencies." 

And I protested again, saying: " Hast Thou not taught 
us also to say : * Give us this day our daily bread ' ? What 
hast Thou meant then, if not that w^e should pray to the 
Father for our material wants ^ ' 

" Friend," answered the Spirit, '' hast thou not noticed 
how these few words of my prayer : ' Give us this day our 
daily bread ' came only after the spiritual part, thus showing 
men that spiritual things had in my mind precedence over 
material ones ? Have I not also said : ' Seek ye first the 
Kingdom of God and all things shall be added unto you ' ? 

" And even the fact that I prayed for material things 
should not forever force you to follow my lead, for, since, 
the Spirit has led you into more light, and progress has 
induced you to abandon the conception of a God intervening 
in your material affairs. 

" For the inner God which has revealed Himself to you 
has nothing to do with rain, sunshine or drought, which are 
climatic agencies, nor with commercial prosperity, abundance 
or scarcity of labor, which regulate it, for these things are 
due to human agencies. Neither is the modern God respon- 
sible for famine, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, destructive 
fires, Inundations, railroad accidents, which are all due to 
secondary causes, independent of His will. 

" Why should you therefore pray to Him, in order to be 
delivered from things over which ye have found Him to have 
no control? Nothing forced the inhabitants of Pompeii or 
Martinique to live at the foot of the volcanoes which 
destroyed them. Whosoever does not keep away from dan- 

39 



A New Gospel 

ger is exposed to it, and all the gods in heaven cannot deliver 
them from the consequences of their ignorance. Clear you 
then your God of all responsibility for disasters Himself 
could not prevent." 

******* 

Then my Spirit objected to the awful isolation where it 
found itself without the familiar idea of a God taking a 
special care of each individual, and I said : 

" O Master, are vre then left alone in this universe to 
fight our battles and can we expect no outside help? Shall 
our imploring voice find no other echo than the eternal 
silence of the divinity?" 

And His Spirit answered me: " How shall 3^ou be alone 
when you have God left in all the realm of feelings and 
em.otions both ethical and religious? Your God shall be 
all the purer, once freed from all the mercenary thoughts 
heretofore attached to your conception of Him as a helper 
in material things. Limited to the domain of conscience 
He can be to you an infinite source of power, thought and 
ideals. Do not Vv-eep like the m^onk Serapion, when his 
anthropomorphic idea of God was shattered, because reason 
show^s your God absent from the daily material events of 
your life, but be of good cheer, for, as the abandonm.ent of 
anthropomorphic ideas was a step forward, so will be the 
abandonment of the idea of a God mixed directly in the 
small affairs of your existence; moreover, how could you 
think yourselves alone when you can be linked as before with 
the universal spirit, whom you can call Father, with whom 
you are identical in substance and who is ever willing to 
dwell in you, if 3^ou open to Him your heart? 

" Besides, have you not the promise that my spirit shall 
be with you until the end of the world? " 

" Spirit of Christ," said I then, '' wilt Thou not teach us 
these things in some new prayer? " 

" True prayer, O friend, can only mean communion with 

40 



A New Gospel 

the absolute of all moral ideals. Keep yourselves therefore 
in tune with these and your life shall be an eternal prayer. 
It is good thus to pray, it is good for the part to commune 
with the whole, for the relative to search union with the 
absolute. Such communion invigorates and refreshes the 
individual soul, which, isolated from the greater soul, would 
decay and die. So, whenever you are weary, down-hearted 
and spiritually weak pray, for communion with the ideal 
is to the soul what food is to the body. 

** When you need to be restored in the spirit, pray you 
then thus : ' O Universal Spirit, Absolute of Holiness, of 
Righteousness, of Love, Truth and Purity, I want to dwell 
in Thee and I desire Thee to dwell in me ! Be Thou my daily 
inspiration, strength and help, so that I can live the Life of 
the Spirit and thereby show others how to live it also.' 
Amen. 

*' Such a prayer will be sufficient for your spiritual and 
moral needs. For, how can one of you be unholy when he 
desires with all his soul strength, the absolute of holiness 
to dwell in him, unrighteous when he longs truly for the 
absolute of righteousness, unloving when he wishes sincerely 
for the absolute of Love, or untrue and impure when he 
really craves for the possession of the absolute of truth and 
purity? 

*' No man could desire all those things sincerely without 
being already in possession of them, at least in part. 

******* 

" As to the satisfaction of your material needs, depend 
on your qualities of energy, strength and will power, do not 
look for any other help. 

" For centuries man has expected a divinity to do what 
he could do himself, what only himself could do. Do not, 
either, expect the triumph of moral ideals to come in this 
world through outside intervention or interference, as a 
gift, for yerily, this triumph depends on your own efforts. 

41 



A New Gospel 

" Too much reliance is put to-day, among the children 
of God, upon the real influence He exerts upon the moral 
advancement of the world. Remember, the Spirit can do 
nothing without you, do not therefore be spiritually lazy 
and expect it to do things for you. 

"Do not sometimes mourn and despair, crying: 'There 
is no justice, love, righteousness, probity and purity in this 
world,' for if you be pure, honest, righteous, loving and 
just, there shall be at least in this world the justice, love, 
righteousness, probity and purity you shall have brought 
into it. You are co-laborers with God. 

"It depends on you also that the beatitudes which I have 
proclaimed shall come to be realized. 

" The meek shall inherit the earth if you help them do 
it by reproducing in your own lives the life of the meek, 
not by approving the strong and the haughty. 

" They that mourn shall be comforted if you comfort 
them. 

" The merciful shall obtain mercy, if you show mercy 
unto them. 

" The Kingdom of Heaven shall belong to them that are 
persecuted for righteousness' sake if you help them to pro- 
mote its com.ing by standing by them, otherwise they shall 
fight in vain. 

" For nothing comes in this world, in the moral realm, 
that does not come first through some of you. 

" Verily, I say unto you again, the Kingdom of God is 
within you and depends on you for its coming." 



xni 

His Spirit came once with me to a conference of ministers 
and doctors of divinity. We heard the different reports 
about the activity of the Church they represented in the for- 
eign and home missions. 

42 



A New Gospel 

After the business papers had all been listened to, there 
came before the conference the case of a certain minister 
who was to be examined for heresy. He held, preached, and 
caused to be published in book form, dissenting views on the 
fundamental doctrines of the confession he belonged to. 
Among other minor divergences from the creed of his 
church, he denied the virgin birth, the trinity and the atone- 
ment. 

His case had been lingering for several years, for he found 
many a supporter among the younger members of the min- 
istry who were more or less Imbued with the new theology. 
But to-day the ancient defenders of the faith were to rally 
around the confession and take a final decision. 

After a heated discussion and an able defense by the 
Indicted one's advocate and representative, the vote was 
taken and, by a large majority, the conference decided to 
ask the delinquent brother to resign from the ministry. 
Some younger members, having protested, were silenced 
vehemently by their elders. 

After the conference some of the learned men gathered 
around the supper table, and I sat among them, accompanied 
by my silent and invisible friend, the Master's Spirit. 

During the supper, which was quite lively, a spirited 
discussion arose on the different aspects of the case which 
had just been settled. Some of the representatives of the 
new spirit were not entirely satisfied and said so, but the 
majority was pleased with the day's work, and one of the 
D.D.'s present resumed the general opinion when he said, 
at the end of an answer delivered to refute and confound all 
opposition to the decision that had been taken : *' If the Lord 
had attended our conference He would have been very much 
pleased with what we have done to-day." 

Then the Spirit of Christ which had been protesting 
within me since the beginning of the proceedings, prompted 
me to rise, and I replied to the good brethren, saying: 

" If the Lord were present, do you know what he would 

43 



A Kezc Gospel 

say ? ' Are these the men that sit in my pulpit and in the 
seat of Moses? What have they all been talking about, 
and for what crime have they cut one of their number from 
the ministry? 

" ' I never heard of those dogmas for denying which they 
have just condemned a brother. 

Did I go about Judea and Galilee preaching theology 
and condemning heretics? 

My people is ever^^vhere the prey of the plunderers 
and of the money power, and they sit here reproving one 
another for dissenting views on academical questions! Is 
there no more serious duty for you ? ' 

" Hear you now what Christ would say about your dog- 
mas : ' A\'Tiat to me is a divinity which you preach and which 
I understand in another sense than you? 

WTiat to me is a trinity which I never mentioned ? 
WTiat do I care for my alleged virgin birth or my pre- 
natal state? 

What care I for an atonement which is immoral and 
Vv'hich could never have taken place? 

'' ' What to me is a resurrection of the flesh which is at 
once impossible and unnecessary? 

" ' I did not send my disciples to preach these things, but 
to announce the coming of the Kingdom of God. I did not 
send them to preach dogmas, but the repentance and forgive- 
ness of sins. 

AMiy not come back to my word and leave alone my 
person, which you have put above my teaching, my word and 
my life ? ' " 

jfe 4{& ^ 4{& ^ ^ ^ 

As they all sat there, speechless with astonishment, the 
Spirit of Christ urged m.e on : 

" ' You have falsified my Gospel, the Gospel of Christ, 

44 



A New Gospel 

with doctrines of which you have made the doors of heaven, 
opened to those who accept them, closed to those who refuse 
them. 

" ' What do I care for doctrines of which I never had a 
suspicion ? 

" ' You go around preaching I came to save men from the 
consequences of the fall. 

How could I save them from a fall which never took 
place ? 

You go around quieting your flocks and yourselves with 
the thought: God shall impute to us the merits of His Son. 
"'Fools that ye are! The pagans and the Romanists 
shall precede ye in the Kingdom of Heaven, for they at 
least feel the moral imperative to do something in order to 
gain access to the Kingdom, but you lull yourselves to sleep 
on the pillows of imputed righteousness and salvation by 
faith! 

Verily I say unto you: If you have no other righteous- 
ness than the one that shall be Imputed to you you shall 
stand naked before the judgment of the Spirit! 

Salvation by faith has made you slothful and salvation 
by works has made you mercenary. Paul and Luther, and 
the theologians may have told you that you are saved by 
faith, and not by works, but I tell you you are saved neither 
by faith nor by works, but by the Spirit of God which 
dwelleth within you! 

For if ye have in your souls the Spirit of God, ye will 
have faith and ye will do the works! 

For he that hath the Spirit of the Son of Man shall 
do His works. 

Your theologian teachers may have told you, in the 
name of old texts, that God has forgiven the sinners because 
I bore vicariously their punishment, thus making atonement 
for their sins, but I tell you, in the name of reason and 
conscience — the only authorities that you can have, the only 
ones I had — that a God who needs a sacrifice of blood In 

45 



A New Gospel 

order to forgive, can be the God of the ancient Hebrews, 
but He cannot be my Father and the God of modern times ! 

" ' I have given you the parable of the Prodigal Son, to 
show you how readily the father was ever willing to forgive 
his erring and repentant son. 

How much more, O men of little understanding, is 
God willing to forgive the repentant sinner, without the 
shedding of any one's blood, and if any one among you is 
willing to forgive without a blood sacrifice, how can God, 
your Heavenly Father be less generous than one of you? 

Verily I say unto you, you are cleaned by the inner 
presence and growth of my spirit within you, and not by 
any one's blood, shed at any time in history. 

For by what magic can any man's blood, shed once, 
purify all the souls of the future? And if they are cleaned 
in advance why should they strive to be pure? 

" ' Fools and blind ! With your doctrines ye have made 
men parasites of the blood of Christ until they feed on it like 
spiritual bacteria! 

'' ' Stop ye therefore preaching, as Paul did, Christ cruci- 
fied, and proclaim the living Spirit of Christ that can still be 
present among you. 

" ' Preach you instead of dogmas the call of the Spirit 
to a higher life.' " 

Then the ministers recovered from their astonishment and 
they asked me in anger : " What is thy authority for speak- 
ing as thou dost? We know our authorities, we know that 
God spoke to Christ and to the apostles, but thee, none 
knows whence thou comest ? " 

I answered them : " My authority is that my ideal is higher 
than your ideal and my God nearer the truth than yours. 
My authority is the same as Christ's: the power of truth. 
God has spoken to me in the same manner that He spoke to 
Jesus and to the Apostles. My authority, as Christ's, is the 
truth, and it rests on her only. If you can prove that my 
words are not true, do not believe them." 

46 



A New Gospel 

And they answered me : " We believe in Moses, in Christ 
and in the Apostles." 

Then I retorted : " I am sent by the same Spirit as the 
prophets and the apostles, the same inner force compels me 
to restore the truth and to destroy the superstitions that 
have been grafted on the true Christ." 

Then the doctors clamored against me and one of them 
seized me, saying : " Thou settest thyself up as our Teacher 
and thou art not even a D.D. ! " 

" Neither was Christ," said I. '* But I did not come to 
teach you," retorted I, " but to restore Christ in His true 
place. For the apostles were men of their age, they saw 
Christ in the light of their time, their views of Him were 
obscured by the ideas and superstitions of their epoch, why 
should mankind be condemned forever to accept unchal- 
lenged their peculiar conception of Christ? 

" Has not this century of light the right to free itself 
from apostolic errors, or will the words of a dead apostle 
prevail eternally against the living truth and the most sacred 
protests of conscience against some of His interpretations of 
Christ and His life's work?" 

Thereupon they cried vehemently: '* Paul's Christ suffices 
for us, and we want no other! " 

Then I went from their midst in sorrow, because they 
refused to hear the voice of reason and preferred to it their 
bygone traditions and ancient texts. 

XIV 

The Spirit of the Master rose within me one Sunday 
that we came out of church, against the idolatry of which 
His person was the object. For He had often noticed that 
churchmen seemed to give more importance to Him than 
to God in their rituals, prayer and sermons. 

He protested vehemently against the generally accepted 
idea that men could only come to God through Him. 

47 



A New Gospel 

" I have been a Jew," said He, '' therefore a monotheist, 
and I have never set myself up as a mediator between God 
and men. Verily, as freely as I came to the Father can you 
come to Him and you need no mediator. If I have said, 
' No man cometh unto the Father but by me,' it means that 
you cannot find Him unless I show you the way, meaning 
my life and my teaching. You cannot find the Father in 
nature, but in me only; I am the discoverer, the revealer of 
the Fatherhood of God. 

" ^Moreover, have I ever put forward my personality as 
an object of worship? Did I speak as myself or as only 
the mouthpiece, the mask of the Spirit who sent me? Have 
I not said: 'There is one greater than I,' and 'the Father 
is greater than I ? ' 

" AVhy, therefore, do men worship me as the equal of the 
Father, and since when is the part as great as the whole ? 

" They have made of me God and made me to stand 
among men as an object of disunion, and what divides them? 
My divinity, a divinity which I never proclaimed in the 
sense they have interpreted it. 

" I w^ho came to draw all men to m.e — not to me as a 
person or a name — but to the ideas I represented, am now 
an object of division and discord. 

" Go thou, therefore hence, O my disciple, and tell those 
that sit in my pulpit : ' Preach you the unity of God, and 
the unity of the Spirit, and let my person die if necessary 
that men be united as children of a common father, all, 
Jews, Mohammedans, Buddhists, pagans, Catholics and 
Protestants! ' 

' For I would willingly die again so that my spirit of love 
shall live among you. 

" "\\'Tiat is to me the vain honor of a dlvinit}* compared to 
the priceless boon of seeing all men united as children of the 
same Spirit? 

" Proclaim you my humanity if by so doing you shall draw 
all men to me and let this alleged divinity' of mine, as vou 

48 



A New Gospel 

interpret it, join, in the dust of the past, all the dead dogmas 
of long dead religions! Verily, God is one! 

******* 

For what is divinity? 

"'Is it the possession of supernatural powers? No, for 
there are no supernatural powers, and whoever made the 
laws of nature does not violate them to prove or disprove 
any of your pet theories, and all your prayers combined 
could not change one iota of the immutability of law. 

" ' Is it a supernatural birth? Lo, there has never been 
such a birth since the world is a world, for law was the 
same in the past as it is to-day, and such a birth has never 
been recorded. 

" ' I ask you again: What is divinity? Is it doing some- 
thing no other man can do? Lo, there was never such a man, 
for whatever one has done another can do. I was no excep- 
tion to the rule, for have I not told you, ' you shall do 
greater things than I ' ? 

" ' What then is divinity? 

"'You go saying: 'God is spirit,' and you are right, 
therefore divinity must be of the spiritual order, and the 
one among you who comes nearest to the spiritually divine 
should be clothed by you with divinity, if this word is neces- 
sary to you. 

"'Divinity is moral greatness; the greatest morally and 
spiritually is the most divine, and he need not perform any 
miracles to stay divine. 

" ' I ask you then : If your ideal of God would incarnate 
itself and live on earth, could it be more than a perfect 
man ? No. 

" ' Now, I, Jesus of Nazareth, have come among you as 
a model man, as the image of the Father, and it is through 
my life as a perfect man, that you must discern my relation- 
ship with the Absolute, with God, my so-called divinity. 

" ' Let not your mind be deceived by that word, for it 

49 



A New Gospel 

means only my spiritual likeness unto the Father, unto the 
Absolute of all moral perfection, It does not mean super- 
natural powers. 

" ' Now, it Is because of the feeling of my unity with the 
moral and spiritual ideal which I called Father, that I could 
have said without blasphemy, as a revealer of God : ' Who- 
ever hath seen me hath seen the Father.' Therefore, If the 
Father is divine In your eyes, through His spiritual perfec- 
tion, I, being like Him, am divine also, and so Is every 
perfect man. 

" * My identity and my unity with the Spirit are the 
proofs of what you call divinity, and, verily, you need no 
others, be they miracles or Gospel texts.' " 



XV 

I WENT with His Spirit to the churches of the land, and 
He commented wonderingly on the great variety of denomi- 
nations which we encountered among them. 

" Friend," said He, " I had left but one body of disciples 
when I went away from this world, they were all united 
as one family; moreover, I did not organize any Church, nor 
left any creed, how Is It then that men, who call themselves 
my followers, are divided into so many different organi- 
zations? " 

" The reason of this, O Master," answered I, " seems to 
be due to the fact that men have created between themselves 
artificial distinctions to which they cling more than to the 
central truths of Thy teaching. 

" On account of these distinctions, O Lord, Thy disciples 
are divided to-day Into countless sects, each one thinking 
Itself nearest to Thy heart. They have established hair- 
splitting differences between themselves on points of doc- 
trines or sacraments. 

" Some believe in the supremacy of the Bishop of Rome, 

50 



A New Gospel 

and others do not; some believe In Apostolic succession, and 
others do not. Some believe Thou art really present In the 
bread and wine of the Eucharist, and others that Thou art 
not. Some baptize by immersing the head only, others the 
feet, others the whole body, and some use no water at all. 

" Some believe in Thy second coming, and expect It every 
day, while others think it will happen only in a spiritual 
sense. 

" Thus, O Master, hundreds of such minor differences 
create a hundred sects, and if those don't anathematize each 
other any more, as they did In the good old times, it is 
because of the general Indifference of the public to sectarian 
questions." 

* <!*■ Jig. jX* *lt Jit jlt 

Tff 'TfS T^ ^ VfC TfC 

But, when he had been more in contact with the churches, 
when we had visited them for years, listened to their preach- 
ing, talked to the men who represented them, studied the 
spirit which animated them, the Spirit of Christ groaned in 
anguish and his anger rose within me, and when the cup was 
full, He said to me: 

*' Friend, tell the heads of the churches who pretend to 
represent me: 

" Hear ye. High Priests, Chief Priests and Spiritual 
Leaders of my people, what is there In common between 
you and me that you call yourselves my representatives? 

" I am now gone nigh unto two thousand years and It is a 
pathetic fact that this world has never, in all that time, 
known true Christianity! 

" From the very beginning of my era, my Gospel has 
been falsified and you go on perpetuating these same errors 
In your respect for the traditions. 

" For centuries you have been preaching theology, doc- 
trines and dogmas, instead of the coming of the Kingdom of 
God, instead of the word of life. 

" I have been the friend of the sinner, the down-trodden 
and the lowly, but you have always sided with their oppres- 

51 



A New Gospel 

sors, and to-day yet you side with their enemies, and are 
like dumb dogs, that will not bark against the money power. 
You have been the mainstay of the rich and have helped to 
sanction the despoiling of the poor by proclaiming that God 
was the dispenser of wealth. You have been the mainstay 
of kings and tyrants by saying, after Paul, that ' all author- 
ity was from God,' thereby condemning your own fore- 
fathers, who have delivered this land from tyranny. 

'* You have been the pillars of slavery by preaching that, 
' Canaan shall be the servant of his brothers.' 

'' This age has been a time of enlightenment, and progress 
has gone forward with wonderful strides; everything has 
moved ; the Church alone stood still in the ruts of the past. 
No, she has even tried to stop the free flight of human 
thought. With senile hands she has attempted as usual to 
thwart humanity in its intellectual evolution. To-day the 
masses keep away from the churches, and the intelligent 
are long since alienated, but you still cling to the old texts 
and traditions. 

" When any one of my disciples, in the pulpit, has tried 
to bring into the darkness of the Church some of the outside 
reason you have cast him out of the ministry, saying: He 
preaches against the Church and the creed! You fools and 
blind! What is the Church and what is the creed? Are 
they something immutable and perfect that cannot be 
changed ? 

" You drive out of my pulpit the free consciences who can 
no more recite the lessons you have taught them, and you go 
searching the land high and low to find candidates for the 
ministry. But you will soon have to accept the dunce and 
the half-witted, for these alone to-day will do no thinking 
of their own. 

'' This age needs intellectual and spiritual giants to keep 
firmly the helm of the ship of Christ, and the Church will 
put forth pygmies and Gospel parrots! 

" And still you go, lamenting the decay of preaching and 

52 



A New Gospel 

the loss of the Church's authority, while you cling desper- 
ately to the last shreds of your former prestige. 

" Behold ! You have undermined the authority of my 
Church and now my oppressed people look elsewhere, even 
to the ungodly for guides and helpers! 

''But why should the people take you as His leaders? 
Have you not always sided with His oppressors? Are you 
not to-day the allies and the minions of the rich? 

" What is the measure favorable to the people's interests 
which ye have not opposed? 

" Rather than side with the people, you have always licked 
the hand that dispensed you salary, and barked against them 
on behalf of those that paid you! And, where the people 
demanded his rights in this world, you hypocrites have shown 
him heaven as a compensation for them ! 

" But woe unto you ! for to-day my people refuses to be 
kept on the leash by your hands. No longer can you present 
him the next life as a sop for his rights in this one. Lo, he 
growls, he shows his teeth, and the same avengeful hour 
that shall sweep away the money power, shall sweep you 
away also, ministers of my Church, his faithful servants, if 
you do not repent! 

" Let every one that sits in my pulpit listen to the voice 
of his conscience, and blessed is he who can hear my words 
without it smiting him, for this one Is my true disciple ! " 

******* 

When I had arrived at the end of my Investigations of 
the religious side of our social order In the light of His 
Spirit, I pondered deeply over all I had seen and all He 
had told me. As I was sad at the conclusions of my cogita- 
tion. His Spirit quieted me. 

" Friend," said He, " all the signs I have seen show that 
there Is in preparation, in the minds of men, a religious 
reformation next to which the sixteenth century reformation 
was but childs' play. 

53 



A New Gospel 

" If religion and Christianity want to keep any hold on 
modern men, they will have to be renewed from root to 
branches. 

" In the coming upheaval the very existence of any God 
will be called in question, and no expounding of old texts, 
no exhibition of Scriptural authorities, will save religion 
from the fire of reason's crucible. 

" But, be thou not dismayed, for whatever in the religious 
idea will be recognized as useful or necessary, shall be pre- 
served, and true religion shall emerge, purer and better from 
the ordeal; as to the dross, it is good that it should perish." 

jif. ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ 

Then the Spirit of the Master and I extended our inquiry 
to the more social side of our civilization. 



54 



PART II 
HIS SPIRIT ON SOCIAL TOPICS 



I 

As the Christ had always been a friend of the humble 
and the down-trodden, of the sick and the broken-hearted, 
His Spirit turned me toward such, and He wanted to be 
among them again, as He had been of old. 

And thus it happened that we went together in the haunts 
of the poor people of the cities. We saw the houses where 
they lived, the shops where they worked, the stores where 
they bought their goods. We lived with them, we sat at 
their table, listened to their talk, and went with them to 
their places of amusement. 

We learned of their trials, their tribulations, their 
thoughts, their fears and their hopes. Their existence was 
dull, joyless, prosaic, with many cares, much misery and 
little pleasure. 

And the Spirit of the Master sank within me many a time 
when we beheld the present condition of the poor people, of 
those that have to work in the humblest work shops and 
factories to earn just enough not to starve. Their condition 
was so different from the one of His own people, who were 
happy in their humble pursuits, for in His time there were 
no great factories to shut them in, and almost every one 
lived under his own fig tree or had his own small shop or 
trade ; few artisans employed more than three or four helpers, 
and the industrial system of to-day was unknown. Master 
and helper lived together as brothers, there was no difference 
between them, and the servant sat at his master's table, as in 
patriarchal times. 

******* 

We visited one day the houses in the poorest districts of 
the East Side of New York, the tenements of the lowly. 

57 



A New Gospel 

There we saw whole families living, some in cellars, some 
in basements, some in two rooms, some in one room only, 
and even these had boarders. Young and old, men, women 
and children were huddled together in an appalling promis- 
cuity, and filth, moral and material, was their environment. 

Sunshine and fresh air never penetrated those dwellings, 
which had become hotbeds of contagious diseases, where 
successions of tenants came in only to die and be carried 
away to their last resting place. These houses were unbear- 
able in the summer from the heat, and in the winter from 
the cold, for coal was often beyond the means of their 
tenants. All these dwellings were maintained so because 
they paid large returns to their owners, who waxed fat on 
these poor people's money. 

In the streets, where these houses were plentiful the 
harlots openly plied their trade before the children, a 
dreadful example to the young, who elbowed them con- 
stantly, and were corrupted by this awful contact, until 
they knew no more the difference between vice and virtue. 

There also, in the worst quarters, the rum shops and the 
cheap saloons were plentiful and were retailing cheap death 
to their customers. These places were full, almost day and 
night, with a heterogeneous population who spent their time 
in drinking, smoking and gambling at cards, for these were 
the only places where men could satisfy their craving for 
the society of their fellow-men. 

And thus lived millions of human beings in other cities, 
a whole underworld where moral degeneration and crime 
were rampant, and where disease was endemic, a constant 
menace to the rest of the towns. All over the country, in 
every large center of population, such ulcers were to be 
found, a reflection on any civilization. 

When we had finished our journey through the slums of 
the land. His Spirit said to me: 

" Friend, how can a being in the image of God, how can a 
child of the Spirit grow in such an environment? 

58 



A New Gospel 

" It were saner to expect roses to grow in the gutter and 
figs on thistles than moral creatures to thrive in such an 
atmosphere of degeneracy. 

" Even the best seed, planted in such a soil, would grow up 
as an evil plant. Myself, had I been raised in such an 
environment, would not have been better than one of these; 
how can a man morally weaker than I live there a life of 
moral beauty? 

" Friend, those that suffer such iniquities to subsist in the 
great cities create conditions that will destroy them, for men 
are all solidary of one another, what affects one part of the 
social body affects the whole." 

And His Spirit commented also on the strange logic which 
prevailed in our civilization: ''You maintain schools for 
crime and vice in those cities, where you nurture criminals, 
and then you build courts of justice to condemn them, and 
jails to lodge them in. Were it not preferable to first sup- 
press the places where the vicious plant grows than to eradi- 
cate it afterwards when it has borne its evil seed? 

" But, friend, as to the condition of the poor of the lower 
strata of your society, it is not one jot better than in my 
time. If there is a Christian civilization in thy land, it is 
not in the poorest quarters of your great cities that it can 
be found. For nowhere prevails a condition more appalling 
and more desperate — no, not even in pagan lands! " 



II 

After we had seen the tenements of the poor, His Spirit 
came with me another time to visit the rich parts of the 
town. And the people we met there were neatly dressed 
they looked prosperous, well fed, happy. Their surround- 
ings were clean and they bore all the earmarks of luxury. 
No saloons there, but big club houses, the meeting places 
of the people; no cheap places of ?imusement, but theaters, 

59 



A New Gospel 

big churches, nice dwellings in clean streets. As mansion 
after mansion met our gaze, His Spirit was filled with aston- 
ishment at the contrast existing between what we had seen 
before and what we saw now, and He asked me : 

'' Friend, who liveth there, and why is there such a strik- 
ing difference between these palaces and the houses we 
visited before? I thought that I would find less inequality 
two thousand years after my death." 

" Because, O Lord, these are the living places of the 
rich, who have enormous fortunes enabling them to erect 
such dwellings." 

" What a sad difference between the people of this part 
and the people in the other parts of the town ! " 

" Yes, O Master, there is an overwhelming difference. 
Thou knowest the life of the poor, but these rich people 
here have all the joys of life that money can procure. They 
can enjoy every day which God made without caring for 
to-morrow's bread, while the laboring masses have to take 
their Sunday how it comes, rain or shine. In the heat of 
the summer the rich move to cool places on distant moun- 
tains, and in winter they fly to the balmy shores of the 
Atlantic or the Mediterranean. They can spend their days 
in idleness, while retinues of servants spare them the mate- 
rial cares of life. Fine cooks prepare for their table the 
culinary delicacies of the world, and theirs are the oldest 
and rarest wines. Theirs are also the treasures of art, liter- 
ature, poetry and music. When they desire a work of art, 
one of the world's masterpieces in statuary, bronze or paint- 
ing, they acquire it. For them only the artist cogitates and 
creates; for them the jewelers' stores have their diamonds, 
rubies and other precious stones, all their treasures of deli- 
cately wrought and chased fine metals. 

" In fine, O Lord, these are the spoiled children of the 
present social order." 

" WTiy have the rich such fortunes and why are their lives 
so different from the life of mechanics? " queried the Mas- 

60 



A New Gospel 

ter. " Have they worked so much more than their poorer 
brothers, or are they so much more intelligent? " 

'' Not necessarily, O Master," answered I. '' Some work 
more than the poor, but the majority work much less, some 
even don't work at all, and they are not, as a rule, more 
intelligent than the great middle class." 

'' Then why should they have more than the others, if 
they do no more labor, or are no more intelligent? " 

" Well, Master, some of them have inherited their money, 
and others have made it, legally or not, in trade, commerce 
or industry; some have made it in the gambling houses of 
Wall Street; some have made it by obtaining unlawful 
rebates, others by watering stocks, others by financing rail- 
roads and adjudging themselves large dividends. Some have 
simply stolen it, and others have made it through graft. 
But all have made it with the help of their fellow-men." 

" Friend, are there many of those rich people in this 
land ? " queried the Master. 

*' Our country, O Lord, glories in five thousand million- 
aires, owning fifteen billion dollars, while ten of them own 
between themselves two billions, and one alone owns one 
billion dollars!" 

'* What manner of a land is this," said the Lord in sur- 
prise, " that allows such an accumulation of wealth to take 
place?" 

*' Yes, Master, and what is more, those enormous for- 
tunes go on increasing forever. Two-thirds of the increase 
of the nation's wealth are derived by them every day, and 
are being driven in fewer and fewer hands, until five per 
cent, of this people own ninety-five per cent, of this country's 
wealth, claim it as their own, and spend it on their own." * 

'' What then, O my friend, is left to the rest of this 
people?" 

" Well, Lord, four million families have to exist on a 
yearly income of four hundred dollars; three millions are 

* See works of Ch. B. Spahr, James Bryce, Waldron, etc 

6i 



A New Gospel 

paupers, who have less than that, while the Oil King alone 
is said to have a yearly income of sixty million dollars." 

" But how can such inequalities be permitted in a republic 
and in a Christian land?" said the Lord. "What can 
these rich people do with such enormous fortunes? " 

" Some live in luxury and ostentation, offending the rest 
of the land by their vulgar and tasteless display. Most of 
them, O Lord, have done nothing to earn their money; they 
do nothing to increase it, and still it increases continually, and 
the only worry of rich people is to think how they can possi- 
bly spend their income." 

" But, have there been no means of safety taken to pre- 
vent such accumulations from becoming a public danger? 
Don't the rulers of this people know that Babylon, Egypt 
and Rome went down when all their wealth was concen- 
trated in a few hands? " 

'' There is a certain unrest in this country, O Master, and 
there has been talk of establishing an inheritance tax, which 
would almost be equivalent to a restitution." 

" Such a tax, O friend, amounts to saying : ' Let the hog 
gorge himself while alive, but make him disgorge when he 
is dead.' The ideal is to make the gorging impossible by 
destroying the spirit of hoggishness and selfishness which 
leads to it," said the Lord. 

" Yes, O Master, and also by framing strong laws forc- 
ing the hogs to be unselfish," said L " For I fear hogs have 
no love for ideals or unselfishness, and it has to be forced 
upon them." 

'' Where you have laws," concluded the Spirit, " you shall 
have lawyers to get around them. Let rather every one have 
the law in his own heart." 

^jp ^P ^T* '^' "A* '•^' *T» 

When the Spirit was better acquainted with our class dis- 
tinctions between rich and poor, He grew indignant at the 
thought of them and said to me : " Friend, I shall talk 

62 



A New Gospel 

through thee to the rich of the land, tell them in my name: 

" You proclaim to all the world that this country knows 
no class distinctions while yourselves have built an aristoc- 
racy of money more exclusive than any aristocracy of birth 
and far less noble. You have erected around yourselves 
fences and walls of gold from which you exclude all the less 
fortunate, until it is as hard for a poor man to enter your 
palaces as it was for the serf of yore to enter his master's 
castle. 

'' This is a republic where there ought to be at least a 
semblance of equality, but you, the rich, constitute in it a 
state within the state, with your own class as rulers, your 
own laws and your own justice. 

" When you sit in your cushioned pews on Sunday and 
hear your hired preacher's discourse on the brotherhood of 
men, you nod your head in solemn approval, but how can 
you, without hypocrisy, call brother a being from whom such 
a mass of wealth and such a social distance separates you ? 

" Know you not that nothing is more against my Spirit 
than such monstrous inequality of fortune? Or, perhaps, 
do you still labor under the delusion, which your hired 
preachers have instilled in you, that it is your God who gave 
you this wealth? Just as if you did not know how you or 
your fathers have gotten it! How long do you think that 
this state of affairs is going to last, where the few have 
everything and the masses nothing? How long will you be 
able to say : ' My money is mine, I can do what I please with 
it,' when you know very well that your money comes from 
all, and that you are responsible for it before men and before 
God? 

" Do you not heed the lessons of history, who teaches you 
that there is a day when social injustice must stop, when 
iniquities are avenged ? Do you not see the first glimmer of a 
day of reckoning? Do you not hear the faint rumblings of 
the approaching storm? 

" Perhaps if you know how to discern the signs of the 

63 



A New Gospel 

times, will you be able to ward off the day of reckoning, 
the fatal dies irae already looming up on the horizon of time. 
" But verily, as the French noblemen, on a memorable 
night, laid down their unjust privileges on the altar of 
equality, you will have to lay down your unjust wealth on 
the altar of human brotherhood, as a sacrifice to social jus- 
tice. But if you heed not the voice of reason and righteous- 
ness, it shall come to pass that, when the cup is full, the 
people shall rise in anger, lay their hands on your ill gotten 
gains, and come into their own again. And, verily, on that 
day there shall be rejoicing in heaven, for the time of retri- 
bution and justice will be at hand! " 



III 

Going through our big cities some other time I wanted 
to shovv His Spirit that all was not bad in our civilization. 
I visited with Him our great hospitals, orphan houses, alms 
houses, charitable institutions, homes for the aged and the 
infirm. We saw all our universities, colleges and libraries, 
our magnificent schools and churches. 

And the Spirit of the Master was elated, and He com- 
mended highly all these institutions, imbued with the Chris- 
tian spirit. 

Later on we came upon some tall buildings, and the Spirit 
wanted to know what they were. 

" Some of these belong to the great newspapers of the land, 
others are the property of some life insurance companies," 
said I. When I had explained to Him what these were. 
He approved them heartily. 

" All is not bad in this civilization of yours," said He, 
" and your age shows a great progress over mine in the 
founding of such social works." 

" Yes, Lord," said I, " it would be unjust to deny our 
good points, but all is not unmitigated good in what we have 

64 



A New Gospel 

seen. Take for Instance the life insurance companies, built 
with the money Invested to protect widows and orphans: 
there has been lately a great scandal attached to them when 
it was discovered that they were mainly doing much good to 
their presidents, vice-presidents, directors and agents, who 
had attributed themselves princely salaries — whole families 
of such have found in them sinecures, have waxed fat and 
grown wealthy as a shining example of opportunity timely 
grasped. 

*' Our universities, hospitals, schools, alms houses, homes 
for aged and infirm, are among the best jewels In our crown 
— they are efficient and as honestly conducted as can be done 
In this land." 

When we visited some of the newspaper buildings, the 
Spirit of the Master was elated within me at the thought 
of the masses of people they could reach every day and He 
said : " What a magnificent Instrument for the spreading of 
truth! What a glory for your age to have such a weapon 
at your disposal for doing good ! " 

" Yes, Lord," answered I, " the newspaper is a wonder- 
ful weapon for the cause of righteousness, and it could be 
made to do great things. But It can also, and Is, used for 
evil purposes, to distort the truth and pervert public opinion. 
For, unfortunately, a great many papers are In the clutches 
of the money power, being owned by capitalists who have 
for motto : ' We are not In business to tell the truth, but to 
make money.' 

" Therefore, O Christ, when truth displeases their big 
advertisers, subscribers or readers, those newspaper owners 
clothe It according to the liking of the aforesaid or hide it 
carefully under the bushel. So It happened that part of the 
press has become one of the most powerful weapons at the 
service of class oppression. 

" Some newspapers also get their share of the campaign 
funds which the great political parties distribute to secure 
themselves In power and form public opinion." 

65 



A New Gospel 

" But," observed the Christ, " there must be some good 
in the press to compensate its evil?" 

" Undoubtedly," said I. " The press is the palladium of 
our liberties, and the money power, through its minions in 
the legislature, has often tried to throttle it by appropriate 
bills, but the day the liberty of the press would be curtailed 
would be a sad one for this country." 

* * ***** 

He went with me in the alleys of commerce and the by- 
ways of trade. We witnessed together the fierce competition, 
the struggle of brother against brother, the robbery, thievery 
and trumpery going on in the marts under the name of busi- 
ness. We saw everywhere misrepresentation, lying, cheating 
and deceit universally practiced with a cheerful rascality, as 
everyday things of life. We witnessed the universal selling 
of green goods and gold bricks to the unwary and the simple 
of the land. We saw the failures, the broken hearts, the 
ruins and the suicides caused by competition; we saw nine- 
tenths of those engaged in the struggle fail, fall by the 
wayside and disappear, carried away by the undertow. We 
saw the successful, far from being satisfied with victory, 
rush on madly and greedily, to renewed grasping for money 
and power, until he fell in his turn, old before his age, and 
broken in health, having passed by the best and noblest 
things of life without having seen them. We saw men live 
small, narrow lives, all for business, just as if it had been 
an awful God to whom they had to offer, in perpetual 
sacrifice, all their thoughts, all the moments of their lives. 
They worshipped business as their first thought in the morn- 
ing, during the day, and their last thought at retiring was 
for business, and even at night they dreamed of their God. 
They lived and never knew the sweetest joys of life. They 
never heard the soft appeal of nature, the noble call of art, 
the grave invitation of literature, the soul inspiring voice of 
music, or the inner sweetness of the life of the Spirit." 

66 



A New Gospel 

The Master's Spirit, learning of all these things, sorrowed 
over the folly of ruined lives and wasted opportunities. 



IV 

While we were pursuing the investigation of our social 
order in the light of His Spirit, the Lord was painfully 
shocked, for very often, in opening our morning newspapers, 
we found the record of some new scandal, the exposure of 
some political rascality, the story of numerous graftSj the 
evil doings of some great railroad financier or the prevarica- 
tions of some life insurance company or bank president. 

Those things would crop up regularly, like the visible 
pustulae of some hidden interior disorder. The sight of them 
surprised the Master all the more that I had assured Him 
that our country was a most Christian one. 

We tried to trace those evils to their source and we 
found them to come from the idea that a position of public 
or private trust was considered by the trustee only as an 
opportunity for private gain and personal enrichment. 

We found this idea very prevalent among politicians, 
aldermen, representatives and senators. The politicians 
from on high started the ball rolling, for they were ''not 
in politics for their health, but for what was in it " ; the 
minor politicians followed, scrambling for offices, jobs and 
sinecures, and their retinues of petty heelers scampered after 
the crumbs that dropped from the big man's table. We 
found state and municipal politics organized as a huge 
grafting machine, whereby bosses, politicians of all magni- 
tude, ward leaders and their heelers, waxed fat in the shade 
of the old plum tree, which they shook regularly to their 
mutual satisfaction. 

We found the great public corporations feeding copiously 
the machine, in exchange for privileges and franchises which 
belonged to the public, but were traded and knocked down 

67 



A New Gospel 

to the highest bidder by the representatives of the machine 
In power. 

Everj'thing was bought and sold, and, save for rare 
exceptions, ever>' man had his price. 

Once in a while political and financial methods were 
exposed in some great scandal that would reek all over the 
land ; great indignation was expressed In the newspapers, 
justice was aroused. But soon everything settled down 
again; justice had been appeased In some mysterious way, and 
the crowd under the plum tree resumed its work, a little 
more carefully perhaps. 

Great lawyers w^ere hired by the head grafters, financiers 
and organizers of great corporations, to teach them how to 
keep within the limits of the law In their highway operations, 
and these lawyers waxed rich. 

It was altogether a jolly, rollicking, diamond w^earing, 
vrlne opening, high living company we found at work on 
the public's pockets In this Christian land of ours. 

" Friend," said the Lord, " the satraps of Persia and the 
proconsuls of Rome were clumsy prevaricators in comparison 
with the systematic operators of this time. They were 
appointed by the imperial government and inflicted by force 
on their conquered victims, but here, the plunderers are put 
in office by, and operate with, the consent of the governed 
on which they live, and this Is certainly an Improvement on 
the old ways. 

" Still, I dare say that the new way is not more Christian 
than the antique one, and if this land is Christian in any 
way. It must be In other things than In its politics." 

V 

I TOOK His Spirit with me to Wall Street, in the Stock 
Exchange; there we witnessed a scene worthy of Dante's 
" Inferno." It was a hear market day, and we saw, huddled 
around the poles, crowds of men screaming, pushing their 

68 



A New' Gospel 

way over one another, shrieking themselves hoarse, elbov^^ing 
each other frantically In their anxiety to sell. At each pole 
one or two men were standing In this turmoil ; they sold stock 
by hundreds and thousands of shares, lowering the price at 
each batch, and the others stood around, wild-eyed, hatless, 
collarless, selling as fast as orders could be penciled, to get 
at least a fair price, before the stock would tumble down, 
lower and lower. 

A wind of silent panic was blowing over the Exchange, 
and, like wild madmen or howling demoniacs, the brokers 
would rush at each other, brandishing their memoranda 
books, crying at the top of their voices. And, when the 
gong sounded the closing, when It was over for the day, 
some went away broken-hearted and ruined, and others went 
home with a smile, rich. 

As I was standing there, speechless with amazement, the 
Master's Spirit asked me, wonderingly: 

" What Is this and what are these men doing? " 

" This, O Master, Is the financial heart of this city, of 
this Christian State. Here fortunes are made without work- 
ing and unmade in the twinkling of an eye. A man may 
walk in rich and come out poor, he may step In poor and 
come out rich. Here, O Lord, a few men, by the power of 
untold wealth can manipulate the market at their own sweet 
will ; they ruin thousands according to their Interests or 
enrich thousands, but they always reap the lion's share, for 
they play with marked cards. 

" Here values are Inflated or debased according to the dic- 
tates of a pool of financiers, and the best Industries of the 
land can be run down, the worst can be artificially boosted 
up. Here things are not what they are, but what a few men 
want to make them appear. 

" To-morrow, or at some other day, there will be a bull 
market, and the stock prices which have to-day been brought 
down, will be brought up again, and those that bought low 
to-day will sell and reap a harvest. Such scenes are enacted 

69 



A New Gospel 

here tYtry business day of the year. Here men come and 
risk their honor, their family's, their fortunes, their all. 

" A day like this one, O Lord, means ruin for hundreds, 
failures, broken hearts and broken homes, suicides, untold 
misery and distress, it means shame for mothers, wives and 
daughters; it means loss of hope, of honor, of life. All this 
is sacrificed to the general spirit of speculation which per- 
vades all classes, and to the triumph of the few sharp ones 
who go, gloating over their victory, like vulture over 
carrion. 

" This whole street, O Lord, is the Temple of Mammon ; 
the only god that is worshipped here, the Almighty Dollar; 
and it can be said also that every business house in the cit>' 
is a private altar erected to his worship. 

" The wisdom of our legislators shines also forth in all 
its brightness in the existence of this Stock Exchange, O Mas- 
ter, for they forbid lotteries and close small gambling houses, 
but they allow to run here, every day, the greatest gambling 
Hell of the world." 

" Friend," said the Spirit, " I saw to-day a scene which 
was never equaled in its power for evil in the days of Baby- 
lon, Nineveh or Rome. For those cities, in all their wicked- 
ness, never conceived of gambling on such an immense scale, 
neither did they have all the moral evils that such a place 
carried in its wake. Verily, modern man has excelled the 
ancient and gone one degree farther in perversity. Probably, 
O friend, wilt thou tell me that some of these gamblers call 
themselves Christians ? " 

" Most certainly, dear Master, they do ! Some of them 
are elders in Thy churches, almost all contribute to their 
support and some give the surplus of this tainted money to 
all kinds of charities and good works." 

" This generation," concluded the Spirit in awed surprise, 
" seems to be morally blind. To its dulled perceptions evil 
is no more evil, thievery is only graft. It only sneers when 
it ought to grow indignant, and remains indifferent when it 

70 



A New Gospel 

ought to rise in revolt. It is the saddest case of moral per- 
version the world has ever known." 



VI 

His Spirit came with me to the divorce courts of this 
land. There were unveiled before us an unseemly side of 
life, and the hidden ulcers of matrimony. We saw men 
and women being divorced for cause and without cause. We 
saw, sanctioned by law, divorces concocted in the offices of 
crooked lawyers. And the causes, for many a rupture of the 
home ties, were a farce and a mockery, being lies, fake wit- 
nesses, trumped up evidence and collusion. All over the 
country the divorce mills were grinding, not slowly nor 
fine, but quickly and coarsely, the human grist that flowed 
under their stones. We saw a court when ten minutes was 
the average time needed to pronounce a divorce. 

We saw all sorts and conditions of people being separated, 
who, by all the laws of common-sense, should never have 
come together. We saw a rich man of sixty-five being 
divorced from a wife of twenty, whom he had married when 
she was only sixteen, and a man of thirty-two being freed 
from a wealthy wife of sixty-seven whom he had married 
when she was sixty-five. Thinking of the many homes so 
broken and of the fate of children so deprived of one or the 
other of their parents, the Master grew sad at heart, and as 
he expressed His indignation, I told Him: 

" Yes, O Lord, Thou seest in us one of the most divorced 
nations of the world, and some of our States and cities are 
a by-word, even among our people. South Dakota is our 
great divorce center, where the aspirants of disunion flock 
in droves to be granted freedom, after six months' residence. 

" People who want to separate always find a cause and 
a way, for what the law of one State does not allow the 
statutes of another permit, and what is illegal in one is legal 

71 



A New Gospel 

in another, so that, thanks to the loop-holes, the candidates 
for matrimonial rupture can be accommodated to their 
mutual satisfaction. 

" Consequently, O Master, since divorce is made so easy, 
our people rush into wedlock with reckless haste, our family 
ties are getting loose, and the sanctity of matrimony fares 
Ytry hard, in fact, it is becoming obsolete." 

*' What do your churchmen think on this question of 
divorce? " queried the Lord. 

" They cling to Thy words, as reported by the Gospel 
w^riters : ' Whosoever shall put away his wife, except it be 
for fornication, and jhall marry another committeth adul- 
tery; and vrhoso marrieth her which is put away doth commit 
adultery.' Some extremists even omit the fornication clause, 
which they regard as an interpolation and forbid the grant- 
ing of any divorce at all. Of late, Master, the causes for 
divorce have multiplied, and, if a few moralists deplore their 
frequenc}', the people in general do not complain. They 
think it better to separate vrhat cannot stay together than 
sentence two beings, unfit for common life, to a life-long 
common misery. Master, canst Thou not issue some new 
commandment that shall be an authority for us to check this 
growing evil and shall be binding? " 

'' Friend," said the Master, " such commandments were 
possible in the childhood of the race and in a theocracy, but 
the only authority recognized in a democracy to-day is the 
will of the greatest number for their greatest good. Man 
works out his own salvation, sometimes clumsily, with many 
errors and much suffering, but in the end the solutions he 
finds by himself are the best. Authoritative standards are a 
thing of the past. The people in their clumsy law-making 
have found empirically in divorce lavrs a solution for their 
troubles, and no authority or text more or less sacred will 
ever prevail against this law of experience, and collective 
wisdom." 

" But, Master," protested I, " how canst Thou speak 

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A New Gospel 

thus when Thou hast said: 'Whom God hath joined let 
no man put asunder ' ? " 

" Friend," answered He, " has God united the rich man 
of sixty to the young bud of sixteen? Has God united the 
wealthy woman of sixty-five to the young man of thirty? 
Is He a part in all the buying and selling of the matrimonial 
market? Is He involved in all the petty motives and the 
sensual dreams of them that seek husbands and wives? Or, 
has God joined these because they stood before a minister 
or a priest? 

" Why be surprised, then, when the higher laws of nature 
disjoin, through divorce courts, what man only has joined? 
Verily, I say unto you, the divorce evil shall go on increasing 
until you have reformed the very essence of marital unions. 

" What is to be corrected is not the frequency of divorces 
which are only a remedy for a prevalent evil, but the light- 
mindedness and the base motives with which people rush 
into such an holy state as matrimony. Believe me, friend, 
perfect men and perfect women will make perfect unions. 
But there shall be no such union until the Spirit shall really 
join together His pure and simple children, who love each 
other with all their heart, with all their souls, and with 
all their mind and without any impure motives, without even 
the shadow of money hovering over them." 



VII 

The Spirit having manifested the desire to see how 
men were living, and to investigate our social machinery in 
all its parts, we set out together to visit the mills, factories 
and shops of the land. 

As I had been connected with the industrial world for 
twenty years, I was able to point to Him all the intricacies 
and the wheels of the modern system of wealth's production. 

We went together to the iron mills, steel plants and coal 

73 



A New Gospel 

mines of Pennsylvania, to the cotton mills of the South, to 
the spinning and cotton printing factories of New England, 
to the great furniture industries of the West and to the 
packing houses of Chicago. 

Then I took the Master to the factories, shops and sweat- 
shops of our great cities, and everywhere was to be witnessed 
the great effort, and heard the noise of the millions toiling, 
the tremulous sigh of human labor at work creating the 
wealth of this country. 

We listened to the wail of the population in travail, we 
saw the magnificent gesture of industry, and, realizing its 
immensity and its grandeur, the Master admired at first its 
majesty. 

'' This industrial age of yours, brother," said He, " has 
far outdistanced the puny social fabric of ancient times. It 
has organized and systematized human effort, and harnessed 
its energy in a way never equaled before." 

" Yes, O Lord," said I, " this industrial age is a sight of 
incomparable beauty to whoever understands the dignity 
and nobleness of human labor." 

** Let us now see," added the Lord, " how it has benefited 
the sons of man." 

Then we went together and probed deeper into this age 
of iron and steel. We went to live with the workingman 
on his bench and in his house. We shared his toils, his life 
and his pleasures. And, while we were engaged in our 
inquiry, we recoiled in dismay at what we discovered. 

We saw how this magnificently organized industrial sys- 
tem took the workingman almost from childhood, how it 
kept him down to just enough wages to keep his soul in its 
fleshy tenement, how it sucked out of him, year after year, 
his strength and his life's blood, how it finally dropped him 
on the brink of the grave, old before his age, exhausted and 
worn out. 

We saw in the great factories of the towns, rows after 
rows of girls and women, bent over sewing machines, making 

74 



A New Gospel 

shirts, shirtwaists, clothing of all kinds, season after season, 
year after year. To them also the system gave just enough 
not to starve, just enough to leave their lean bodies strength 
to continue their toil until they, in their turn, unable to go 
on further, would drop in the grave. And all those willing 
white slaves cost nothing to their masters, who did not 
have to buy them or take good care of them, so when they 
were sick or old, others were hired to grind away their 
lives also. 

We saw, all over this industrial world, the immoral 
spectacle of hundreds of men or women, working away 
their lives for the benefit of one, or at the most, a few men. 
We saw these live in possession of all that this bright civili- 
zation could produce in refinements of luxury; we saw them 
live in palaces, have country houses, yachts, automobiles, 
horses and carriages, large retinues of servants ; we saw 
them spend in one year enough to keep hundreds of families 
in comfort and all this was made possible by the incessant 
toil of the silent masses whose lives we had witnessed. 

As He listened to the wail of human labor, the heart of 
Christ was moved with pity. " And those," said He, mean- 
ing the working classes, " is there no hope for them in your 
industrial inferno f Shall they forever have only the dregs 
of life, while making honey for others? " 

*' None whatever. Master," said I, " unless there is a 
change in this social order. They will drudge and drudge, 
every year more bent and more tired. When they fall 
sick the time is carefully deducted from their small wages. 
If they happen to save a little from their starvation wages, 
disease and lack of work will absorb it. When old, they 
will depend on others, and when, at last, they will drag 
their weary bones to the grave — the first time they will 
really rest — they will never have known the best and sweetest 
things of life. Existence will have been to them an endless 
drudge and they will welcome death as a deliverance." 

" Verily," said the Master, " I have now seen the dark 

75 



A New Gospel 

side of this bright industrial system, the white slavery." He 
had more yet to see. 

VIII 

He came with me in the cotton mills of the South and 
there we saw children from eight years of age up, working 
ten hours and more a day. We saw^ them shut up in unsani- 
tary buildings, breathing an air loaded with cotton dust 
and brought into contact with coarse men. We saw them 
deprived of all that makes child life worth living and sweet: 
play, sunshine, fresh air and nature's company. We saw 
them on the farms all over the land: drudging in the fields 
since the days their little limbs could move freely: a happier 
lot than the factory hands, but still, working beyond their 
ages' strength and deprived of their share of school time, 
the preparation for life. 

He descended with me in the coal mines of the country; 
we saw other little ones giving away their lives in these 
infernos, shut up from the light of day, in the bowels of 
the earth, breathing the coal dust laden air, while above 
them the birds sang in the bushes; and the cattle in the 
fields, happier than they, wandered at liberty under the 
caress of the sun. 

He came with me in the populous quarters of the great 
cities, and in dingy, foul-aired sweat-shops, we saw hundreds 
of other children huddled together hardly up from the cradle, 
working from dawn until late at night to help their parents 
earn a scant living, the few cents necessary to keep body and 
soul together. And all over the land, in the cotton mill, the 
glass factory, the sweat-shop, the farm or the working 
benches, were more than two million children grinding away 
their lives for a starvation pittance. They came in the light 
of this world to go back again in the night of death, after 
a few shambling steps in the hell of modern labor, ripe for 
the merciful rest of the grave. We saw those that survived, 

76 



A New Gospel 

old before their time, gnarled in body and crooked in mind, 
ruined in health and spirit, a cursing, drinking, tobacco chew- 
ing horde, a slight on any civilization. 

And the heart of the Master was cast down within Him 
at this sight, more than at any other one we had seen before. 

" Friend," said He, as He saw me sorrowing at the sight 
of such iniquities. I am now gone from this world for 
two thousand years, and in all this time it has passed for 
being Christianized. But, verily, neither Babylon, Nineveh 
nor Rome had such a blot on their escutcheon as the shame- 
less exploitation of child labor I witness in this industrial 
age and in this so-called Christian land — Christian, for- 
sooth ! Happy are the children in pagan lands, for they can 
grow up in freedom of body in God's light and sunshine! 
Happy are the little black waifs of Africa or of the far- 
away isles of the Pacific, for none takes them away from 
nature to shut them up, shivering, in some dark mine or 
factory ! " 

But He had one more glimpse of our industrial world. 



IX 

I WENT with Him once through a manufacturing town, 
all black with the smoke of coal, with its sky darkened by 
the huge chimneys which took the place of trees. Thus 
walking we came near an iron foundry all begrimed and 
grim. From it came a noise and a roar as from the toil of 
a thousand men. 

As we were admiring its gigantic proportions and think- 
ing of the titantic labors that were achieved therein, lo, an 
old man came limping by. He was all wrinkled, bent, 
gnarled as an old tree; his face was expressionless, rigid, his 
eyes were without luster, he was as the picture of Modern 
Labor, when it is grown old. He came to us, and pointing 
at the monster lying before us with a trembling finger : 

77 

tore. 



A New Gospel 

"See that mill?" said he, "I have been working there 
for forty years. Now I am old, and they have just thrown 
me out! " 

And, lifting his arm toward heaven in a gesture of mute 
despair and vague threatening, he walked away, uttering 
dark curses through his toothless mouth. 

Then the Lord asked me: 

" What kind of a land is this that allows such iniquities? 
Is it the country of the pagans, or the isle of some savage 
tribe?" 

" No, Lord, this is Christian America. Thousands of 
old men like the one that just passed by are every year 
cast out of the places where they have worked themselves 
into old age, by the very people they have helped to make 
rich." 

" So this is a Christian country, indeed," said Christ. 
" But I have heard that in India, which is a pagan land, 
they take care of animals until they die of old age." 

" Some people do that here also, O Lord ; they pension 
old horses, cats and dogs, but they never think of the human 
beings who labored for them all their lives, and have given 
them the best that was in them, they let them starve alone 
in their old days." 

" Is it a crime to be old among this people of yours ? " 
queried the Lord. 

" This country is no worse than any other in this respect, 
O Master, although it seems to have gone farther than in the 
Old World. There, a man must be really unfit not to find 
work, but here young people are everywhere preferred to 
older, and some companies have even fixed what is called 
the dead limit of age, over which no man can find employ- 
ment. One of them has once lowered this limit to thirty- 
five years." 

'' But what becomes then of the men above this dead 
limit?" said the Lord. "Are they killed and eaten up as 
was the custom of some savage tribes with their old people? " 

78 



A New Gospel 

" No, Lord, but what becomes of them Is no concern of 
the companies, they can starve or commit suicide without dis- 
turbing the serenity of capital." 

'' Friend," said the Lord, '' this is one of the most heart- 
less civilizations that history has ever witnessed. Why! 
you have here law-makers, courts of justice and general 
attorneys, and no action has ever been taken against any 
company that thus sentences to starvation men above the 
dead limit? " 

" No, Lord," answered L " Moreover such an action, 
were it ever begun, would undoubtedly be declared uncon- 
stitutional, as being an attempt to limit man's freedom of 
exploiting his fellow-men." 

" Has there indeed been no law enacted to save from star- 
vation the old servant of this social order, who gave away 
his life for it?" said His Spirit, incredulously. 

" Not in this country, O Lord. There is, it is true, a far 
away island of the Pacific where they have granted pensions 
to old workingmen, but nothing has been done in Christian 
America." 

" Perhaps this is a poor country," observed the Lord, " too 
poor to take care of its old ? " 

" Forsooth! Lord," declared I, " this is the richest nation 
of the globe, and its resources are unlimited. Why, the 
product of an adequate inheritance tax alone could more 
than provide for pensioning every poor man above fifty! " 

" Why has nothing been done then? " exclaimed the Lord 
in dismay. 

" Well, Master, our political leaders have been too busy, 
up to now, with party politics to think of such things. It 
is only since one party has adopted some socialistic tendencies 
that they woke up lately to the fact that there is a social 
question. Unfortunately, O Lord, our laws are made by 
the rich for the rich, and no law will ever be passed by them, 
that will touch the arch sacrosanct of capital and take money 
out of the rich man's pocket." 

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A New Gospel 

"What has the Church done? Has no prophet of mine 
lifted up his voice in defense of the down-trodden ? " 

" Thy Church, O Master, is vaguely aware that things 
are not as they should be. But its eyes have been lifted up 
to heaven so long that it has got a stiff neck and can hardly 
see what goes on here below. 

" Besides, it has lost its hold on the people, and nobody 
heeds its voice. 

" Still some noble work is done by some of Thy churches ; 
some beautiful characters are to be found in them; they 
have opened charitable institutions, missions, settlements, 
visits to the poor and other relief work, but, in presence of 
the enormous work required to change the warp and woof of 
this social fabric, the little they do is a small palliative, and 
is about equivalent, for true efficiency, to a Spanish fly on 
a wooden leg. 

*' As far as prophets are concerned, there are precious few 
left in Thy Church. The evil lies in the fact that the 
ministers are salaried by the rich of their congregation, and 
they cannot preach against them. They are not all dumb 
dogs, some splendid specimens remain, and an independent 
voice is heard once in a while, but the majority cannot bark, 
for, if they did, they would lose their salary, and they must 
live." 

" I see," said the Spirit, " that the rich of this nation 
are trying carefully to muzzle every voice that could speak 
the truth, in politics, justice, church and press, but they 
cannot muzzle the voice of my Spirit, which is heard in the 
souls of men. 

" This Spirit is working silently, and, when the time of 
its explosion will be at hand, it will rend and tear to pieces 
any social order, grounded on injustice to the many and 
privilege to the few! " 



80 



A New Gospel 



X 

After our going and coming was over, I asked the Spirit 
of the Master what He thought of our land and our civiliza- 
tion, and He answered me, saying: 

" Friend, a civilization where the many are only machines 
to make money for the few, where hundreds of lives are 
spent for the benefit of one man, where the unable to work 
and the old are cast out in the gutter, to die of want, where 
the strong, unmercifully crush the weak, where even child 
labor is harnessed to the chariot of the wealthy, such a civili- 
zation may be materially great, but it is morally small, it 
may be prosperous, but it is not Christian. 

" For Christianity means love, and there is no room for 
love in a competitive social system. 

'' For, has my Spirit permeated this civilization that you 
call it Christian ? 

" No ! more than ever man is a wolf to man, and the 
struggle for life. is as ferocious as in the stone age. 

" You do not kill with a club, or a sword, but you murder 
in deadly trade competition, and the battle is all the more 
merciless. 

" You boast of your Christian ideals, but, in reality your 
social life is like a fierce football game, out of which the 
strongest emerge, somewhat broken in reputation and health, 
but saying: ' I am all right now, I have made my money, 
let God take care of the others ! ' 

" You heartless and selfish rascals ! Take you no heed 
of the weak you have down-trodden, of those who lie in the 
dust, broken-hearted or dead? Is this fraternity? 

" And still you proclaim yourselves a Christian people and 
your presidents set this forth in their Thanksgiving procla- 
mations ! 

" No ! Your only God is the Almighty Dollar, and graft 

8i 



A New Gospel 

is his prophet! Your gospel is the gospel of Lucre, and 
you only worship success, however it is achieved! 

*sie, ^e. 2I& iSe^ ^ ^ 

Tf* 'Sf: vfr ylf yfc ^ 

*' Friend, verily I say unto thee : Greece had its helots, 
Rome its slaves, the medieval times its serfs, but this age has 
its salaried men, and labor to-day is little better than 
slavery of old. For capital now takes less care of its white 
slaves than the slave owner of old, for they cost him noth- 
ing. Woe unto any one that uses his brother's strength, 
talent and life to enrich himself, without sharing equitably 
with him the product of his labor, for such is an enemy of 
my kingdom and a pillar of hell ! 

" The enslavers of labor have made it a curse and a 
degradation. 

" By wasting hundreds of lives for the benefit of a few, 
they have robbed human life of its dignity and nobleness, 
and half of the moral evils of this world are due to this 
abasement. 

" The fear of losing their bread makes the laborers look 
down at their brothers as possible rivals, and jealousy, mean- 
ness and hatred are rampant among them. The fear of 
possible starvation causes more suspicion, treachery, hatred 
and deceit than all other causes combined, for it makes 
brother rise against brother, father against child, and child 
against parent. 

"Friend, the masters of this land go, saying: 'We are 
the heads of enterprises and their guiding genius, we are 
therefore entitled to more than our less intelligent brothers.' 
They may be right in this, but are they entitled to every- 
thing? 

" One thing is undisputable : Whoever does a lion's 
work is entitled to a lion's reward, this is strict justice. 

"But the lion is apt to forget he belongs to the great animal 
family, and he takes often more than what is coming to him. 
To attempt to deprive him of his natural share by legisla- 

82 



A New Gospel 

tion would lead to his extinction and to the destruction of 
all initiative and ambition in the strong. Once the strong 
extinct, there would remain only lambs, and these are not 
ideal material for a vital social organism. The ideal social 
remedy is to teach the lion altruism. He must be induced to 
hunt for the community instead of hunting for himself. 

" Love, who is greater than Justice, must tell him to 
relinquish his right to a lion's share in favor of his weaker 
brothers. This is not charity, but love and service, without 
which no great social order can subsist. 

" The strong are also tempted to say : ' All have the same 
chance to become employers and owners of wealth in this 
free country.' But this is false, for have the lamb and the 
dove the same chance in the battle for life as the lion and 
the tiger? Verily, some men are as lions and tigers, devour- 
ing the lambs and doves. It may be the fate of the weak to 
be devoured by the strong in the animal kingdom, but this 
should not be in a Christian land. 

" Say now one word, O my disciple, to the strong: ' You, 
the well-clawed and long-teethed of the earth, know you that 
you are all members of one family; as you are the most 
endowed with will and intelligence, you should be the elders 
and guardians of the weak and less endowed, this is the ideal 
you should strive to attain. 

" ' Far from using your strength and gifts for plundering 
your less favored brothers, you should put your talents at 
their service, and be your brother's keepers. By so doing 
only will you earn the right to call yourselves children of 
your Father which is in heaven. All else you may do is 
sham and hypocrisy. 

" ' For my law is service, and my Spirit is a Spirit of 
Love.' " 



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A New Gospel 



XI 

Arrived at the end of our long examination of the differ- 
ent aspects of our civilization, we were both sad on account 
of the things we had seen in this Christian nation. 

" Master," said I at last, " judge us not according to our 
transgressions, lay not our iniquity upon us, but judge us 
according to Thy mercy. 

" For we have sinned against Thee, we have not kept 
Thy commandments, we have not followed the law of love. 
Therefore have we fallen from grace before Thee, and the 
fact that other peoples are perhaps worse than we are does 
not clear us before our conscience." 

Then the Spirit spoke to me gently, kindly, like one who 
sees, beyond the clouds of to-day, the clear sky of to-morrow. 

" Friend," said He, " be thou not discouraged and let 
not the sight of evil discourage thee. What we have seen 
here is the eternal play of two antagonistic forces, the great 
battle that is ever raging in the moral universe. 

" On one side are mustered the powers of evil, on the 
other the forces of good, and the battlefield is the hearts of 
men. 

" Incessantly, day and night, year after year, century after 
century, righteousness battles against unrighteousness, altru- 
ism against selfishness, love against hatred, purity against 
impurity, virtue against vice, generosity against meanness. 
Men are only the incarnations of these warring forces. Be 
thou not surprised therefore to see this battle raging even 
more fiercely in this great country of thine. It will make the 
coming victory of the forces of good all the more apparent 
to the witnessing world. 

" Thy country, O friend, needs a powerful reaction on 
the coarse commercialism wherein it is plunged, and what- 
ever will cause It ought to be welcome If it purifies this great 

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A New Gospel 

body from corruption. It needs a great awakening of the 
public conscience, a strong revival, not of Bible fetishism, 
but a revival of interest in the things of the Spirit. 

" It must revise its standards of value, and learn to judge 
a man by w^hat he is, not by what he has. It must show a 
higher regard for the representatives of the things spiritual, 
and must proportion its rewards of money and honor in 
consideration of the real intellectual or spiritual worth of 
the man. The disgraceful sight of a common pickle-maker 
or dry goods seller rolling in gold, when the professor, the 
minister and the teacher earn only a scant living, must be 
blotted out. This commercial age must learn how to render 
unto money what is money's and unto the Spirit what is the 
Spirit's. 

" This people, O friend, has also at hand another remedy 
for its evils. Every man, even the worst, fears public opinion 
and craves consideration. Let therefore every noble soul 
among my disciples, let all the pure and honest in the land 
refuse social recognition to dishonest wealth, and there will 
soon be no ill acquired fortunes. Let the universities, the 
teachers of ethics, the pulpits and the press proclaim that 
It is nobler and more worthy for a man to acquire character 
than money. Have moral courage and refuse to shake hands 
with the shady politician, the bosSj the grafter, and you will 
soon have them no more with you. 

" Ostracize socially the pirates of Wall Street, the heads 
of the public plundering trusts, all the highway robbers of 
finance and Industry, the heads of corporations who corrupt 
legislatures — instead of bowing before them and Inviting 
them to speak before your young men. Make it an un- 
written law that no man shall own more than a certain sum ; 
regard as an unfaithful trustee any one who keeps more than 
that sum for himself, and you will soon have no ultra rich 
among you. Train your conscience so to realize human 
solidarity that It shall be filled with shame at the sight of 
social inequality and the iniquitous difference between the 

85 



A New Gospel 

rich and the poor. Then, when It shall become a sin for 
some among you to be so much richer than others, there shall 
reign on earth, not perfect equality, which is an impossibility 
and not to be found in nature, but less inequality. 

" But, verily, friend, this people suffers now all these 
crying injustices and does not rise against them because it is 
itself tainted with the sins of the times. It shall suffer 
from them until it purges itself by casting them from its own 
heart. 

" For the people frown at the very rich, not because they 
feel it a sin to be rich when almost all are poor, but because 
they desire to be rich also and cannot. This is envy and 
covetousness. All such indignation has envy for its inspira- 
tion, and is not genuine and honest. 

" For these people worship Mammon as much as the 
wealthy, and were they in the rich man's place, they would 
act exactly as he, and refuse social recognition to the poor. 

" Let yourselves, therefore, be perfect and your social 

order shall be perfect ; be unselfish, and it shall be unselfish ; 

righteous, and it shall be righteous; holy, and it shall be 

holy!" 

******* 

To complete His teaching, for He knew well the needs 
of our time, the Spirit added the following words: 

" Blessed are the dissatisfied with present conditions : for 
they are the heralds of progress! 

" Blessed are they with many children : for they shall 
inherit the earth and benefit from the ages' labor! 

" Blessed are the men of the fields : for they are away from 
the corruption of great cities. 

" Blessed are they that love music, poetry, art and liter- 
ature: for theirs are the real joys and glories of life! 

" Blessed are they with little money: for they shall have 
little care! 

" Blessed are they with few material cares : for they can 
live the life of the Spirit! 

86 



A New Gospel 

" Blessed are they that live the life of the Spirit : for they 
possess, now already, eternal life! " 



XII 

Then, as the Spirit saw me still down-hearted and dis- 
couraged, because of the un-Christian condition of the world, 
He gave me as a consolation His vision of the State Ideal. 

Then, as the prophet of old, I saw a beautiful state 
wherein dwelt the men of the future. 

The head thereof was a council of wise men, who had not 
been chosen by the politicians, for there were no such then, 
but by the wise and the learned, as the best and most intelli- 
gent of them, after they had given proof of their fitness and 
capacity to govern. 

Men and women alike had seats in this council, for there 
reigned perfect sex equality. 

There was no army and no navy in this state, for the earth 
enjoyed universal peace, and man was everywhere a brother 
to man. 

There were no prisons, no courts of justice, no judges nor 
lawyers, for every one had the law of God in his heart. 

There were no churches, for every home was an altar to 
the living God, and every soul a temple of the Spirit. 

As the people of that state had perfected themselves, they 
had also perfected their God, who was no more a being 
whose awful justice needed a blood sacrifice, but the Absolute 
of all Perfection, beautiful and loving. 

There was no Jew nor Gentile, no Catholic nor Protes- 
tant, but all men were children of the same Spirit and wor- 
shipped the same ideal of moral perfection. 

And lo ! There were in it no rich and no poor, for all 
class distinctions had been abolished on the altar of brotherly 
love. Poverty, vice, squalor, filth and the social evil had 
disappeared from the haunts of man, as had also the coarsest 

87 



A New Gospel 

forms of sin. Perfect health followed from a perfect knowl- 
edge and observance of the laws of hygiene. 

As men were seeking character rather than money, and, 
as the possession of wealth did not confer any privilege on its 
owners, men did no more trample upon each other to acquire 
gold, trying rather by healthy emulation to surpass each other 
in wisdom and goodness. 

Then, as all men did not labor to accumulate a surplus 
for a few idlers, the work of the state was done in the 
morning hours, and the rest of the day was consecrated to 
the things of the Spirit. 

There was happiness in city and country, for the evils of 
the competitive system had been abolished, and every man 
did not seek his own, but the social salvation. All were 
working for the common good. 

The men and the women being pure, their unions were 
inspired by pure motives only, and as it was then really God 
that joined them, no man had any cause to put them asunder, 
and divorce was unknown in the State Ideal. 

Love reigned supreme among men, for they all bowed 
before the divine Law of Service, which made the strong 
help the weak and the intelligent put his wisdom at the 
service of his less favored brother. 

Thus in that state I saw realized among men the words 
which are to-day only a prophecy, almost a mockery: liberty, 
equality, fraternity; and the word which bound them all 
three into one was Love. 



THE END 



88 



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